


Providence

by Paintdripps



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Thieves, Dragons, F/M, Gen, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 22:56:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3913750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paintdripps/pseuds/Paintdripps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tale of a kindhearted thief, a budding sorcerer, a grumpy stranger, and some dusty old prophecy that insists on coming true.</p><p>(A fantasy au filled with magic, monsters, and mystery.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> So, hi.  
> It's probably not smart of me to start a new fic with finals just around the corner, but this au was just begging to be written, so here I am.

The corridors are all empty, as far as Marco can see, but what with the way the darkness swallows everything up he can't help but feel nervous. They've done a bit of a role switch, just for practice--it's supposed to be an easy run, after all--but there's just something about this baron's castle that feels wrong.  
  
Maybe it's the disturbing gloom. While most wealthy households would leave their halls illuminated by night, this one is as dark as pitch. The only light comes from the soft silver glow of the moon streaming in through the windows.    
  
Although the windows are creepy, too, what with the stained-glass mosaics of... whichever religious figures those are supposed to be. He shivers slightly. The eyes of those windows are just wrong, somehow.   
  
He hears the sound of something grating against stone brick, followed by a whispered stream of curses.   
  
Maybe they shouldn't have done a role switch. Maybe Eren should have been on guard, so that Marco could help Mikasa with the heavy lifting. Spirits only knew how much the baron's prized shield weighed.   
  
There's a barely muffled thud, presumably as Mikasa and Eren land the shield on the ground. Marco feels a slight twinge of guilt. It's been six years, and he's still never really been able to shake off his misgivings about stealing. But money is money, and money means food, and as long as it means that his friends--no, family--don't go hungry, Marco can't exactly turn down any jobs that they might get.   
  
He wonders, sometimes, if maybe he could go down some other career path. Farming, perhaps. He's always liked working with crops... Not that he has enough experience to be any good at farming, but oh well. But what other skill sets does his possess? Years of experience in the fine art of burglary are well and good, but highly unhelpful in other, more honest lines of work.  
  
Besides, burglary is infinitely more lucrative. They don't steal from the sun-weathered commoners, the ones who have shriveled to husks as they grow food that they won't get to eat. They steal from the rich ones, the ones with baubles worth selling to the underground trade. It's amazing, really, the amount that some people will pay for shiny objects.    
  
There's a faint light bobbing up and down at the end of the corridor... he squints. Is that really a light, or just his eyes playing tricks on him in the darkness?  
  
The flickering light appears to be coming closer. Yes, that is unmistakably a candle.  
  
He shoots a terrified glance at the entrance to the parlor behind him, hoping against hope that Mikasa and Eren are well on their way out through the window.  
  
A heavy clank from the parlor informs him that no, his partners have not yet made their escape.   
  
Ah, damn it.   
  
Marco had hoped that he wouldn't need to use his magic this evening, but it's necessary in order to buy his friends sufficient time.   
  
"W-who goes there?" a girl's voice calls out. She sounds young, maybe only a few years younger than Marco himself. He can just barely make out her figure: she's a tiny little thing. Probably would only come up to his chest if they were to stand side by side.   
  
"It's just me," he says, pouring as much warmth as he can muster into his voice. "Don't worry."  
  
She stops. The light from the candle dances across her face.   
  
"W-who are you?"  
  
Ah, it wasn't enough. Marco swallows; his throat feels tight and dry. "I'm a friend," he calls out gently. He tries to sound reassuring. When was the last time someone had been able to reassure him and put him at ease? He wishes he had inherited his father's gift for words; even without magic, his father had always known exactly what to say. "Don't be afraid."  
  
The girl just stands there. It doesn't seem like there's any danger of her screaming for help and waking the rest of the manor, but Marco doesn't want to take any chances. He keeps talking.   
  
"You should go back to sleep, darling," he murmurs. He thinks of velvet; he needs to sound just as smooth, just as fine. "A young thing like you needs her rest."  
  
She takes a few steps closer. Slowly, as though she's in a dreamlike trance.   
  
"Aren't you sleepy? It's the middle of the night." He's running out of things to say. Velvet. He steals a glance at the window--outside, the night is peaceful, a rich midnight blue. "...the stars are shining, the moon is watching over us. You should go back to sleep. There's no reason to be awake. You're safe."  
  
She nods once, and then turns around and starts to shuffle back to wherever she had come from.    
  
Marco breathes a sigh of relief. "Eren," he hisses over his shoulder.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, I know," comes the whispered response. "Mikasa's already out the window. Come on. Are we clear?"  
  
No one else appears to be coming this way. Marco nods, forgetting that Eren probably can't see him. "Yes."  
  
"Then let's get out of here."  
  
He's never been more relieved to hear those words in his entire life. 

* * *

Once they're a safe distance away from the stone-walled manor, Marco lets out a long, low whistle. Stealth be damned; he needs to express how impressed he is. That is one heavy, tacky-looking shield. (His half-melted arm muscles are a standing testament to its ridiculous weight.) It's coated with some sort of glossy enamel (though Marco can't tell exactly what color; the moonlight bleaches out all colors and washes them with silver and white), and bordered with tiny snakes casted from some sort of shiny silver metal. Or, heck, that might actually be silver.   
  
The coat of arms is definitely not that of the baron's family. Marco tries to remember which family crest has a python holding an apple in its unhinged jaws, but his memory draws a blank. A chill goes down his spine as he locks eyes with the sculpted snake. In the back of his mind, he wonders if the eyes are actual inlaid rubies; they lend a certain luminescent quality to the snake's beady eyes.   
  
"They should be glad we took it, really." Eren smirks. He stares at it warily, mismatched eyes seeming to glow in the dark. Marco tries to avoid staring at him. Forget about the baron's treasure; whoever thought some stupid heavy shield was worth coveting had clearly never seen Eren Jaeger after a job well done, with his self-satisfied little leer. Spirits, he's adorable. "The thing wasn't theirs to begin with, and that symbol is like a beacon for bad luck."  
  
It's certainly not the first time that they've stolen an unlucky or cursed artifact, either, but Marco can't wait for this job to be over so that they can sell the stupid thing and have it off their hands.   
  
Mikasa suddenly tenses. "Get down."  
  
Marco flattens himself on the muddy ground before he realizes what had set her off. Belatedly, he registers the telltale crunch of clunky boots wading through the piles of autumn leaves on the ground.   
  
A familiar heady aroma--Marco can only describe it as smelling like a blend of cinnamon, allspice, and clove, with maybe some anise thrown in--begins to pervade the air. Marco closes his eyes. That's the scent of Eren's magic at work, wrapping them in what Marco hopes is a cloaking spell.   
  
"Just dump the stupid lug here." The voice is deep, brushed with the lilting vowels and hissing S's commonly associated with a Sinan accent. Marco's ears perk up at that. What would someone from the capital be doing this far from the city's walls?  
  
"Cover him with leaves or something. Can't just leave him out in the open. Hey, Bertl. Cover our tracks, wouldja?" Another voice. This one is a woman's voice, rough with impatience.   
  
There's a rustling sound, presumably as the strangers do as the woman says.   
  
A body dump. It's a body dump. He, Eren, and Mikasa are hiding not even a few meters away from murderers.  
  
His heart hammers in his ears. He closes his mouth, tries to keep his breathing steady and slow in and out of his nose.   
He makes eye contact with Mikasa as he fights back the urge to panic. Her face is as impassive as ever, but the way her dark eyes glitter reveals her own nerves.   
  
The rustling stops. Apparently satisfied with their work, the murderers start to lumber away. They make no effort whatsoever to be quiet. Marco wonders if they worry at all about getting caught. 

They wait in silence, until they can no longer hear the footsteps falling, and the only sound in the woods is that of the breeze carding through the treetops. 

Eren is, unsurprisingly, the first to speak. 

"What the fuck."

"That was horrible," Marco agrees, voice hushed. 

"No, I mean, what the fuck," Eren says. He scowls. "Something isn't right."

"There are a lot of things that aren't right about what we just heard, Eren," Marco says. 

Mikasa stands, propping up the baron's shield against her leg. "Eren's right," she says, srunching up her nose the way she always does when she's thinking hard. 

Marco just looks around him helplessly while the other two seemingly lose themselves in deep thought. 

"We should go find the body," he suggests. "Give it a proper burial."

Eren snorts. "You want to get caught digging a grave for the poor sucker?"

Marco winces. He has a point--if they were to get caught dragging a corpse around, there would be no way to spin it so that the situation wouldn't look bad. 

"Still," he says after a heartbeat. 

"But we've got the shield," Eren says. His scowl darkens even more, somehow. "And I have a bad feeling about you going to look for the body."

"No, we should look," Mikasa objects. She chews on her lip, considering, before she adds quietly, "...I hear another heartbeat."

And that's enough for Marco to start running, hardly caring about the amount of noise he's making. Mikasa had heard another heartbeat. 

The victim might still be alive. 

He doesn't know where he's going, really, and he probably should have waited for Mikasa so that she could pinpoint where to go, but there's a crazy tug in his gut, telling him that he needs to get to the site of the body dump right this instant. Vaguely, he is aware of Eren running after him. He doesn't think Mikasa has followed, though. She's probably still waiting with the shield. 

Marco stops, wanting to give Eren time to catch up with him. Now, if he could just find where exactly...

"Marco, you big goon," Eren pants, a little winded from the run. "What were you thinking? ...oh."

Eren takes a moment to survey their location, and after a moment's pause, he points to a pile of leaves near a thorny-looking bush. 

"There." 

Marco couches down and starts scrabbling at the dead leaves. Almost immediately, his fingers find something warm and wet and sticky. 

He pulls his hand back, horrified. The blood on his fingertips--what else could it be but blood?--glistens in the moonlight. It looks black, actually, given how the moon turns everything to monochrome. 

There's a lot of blood, and some of the leaves are stuck to the body, but Marco manages to haul it out from its pitiful burial place. 

It's a young man, maybe about Marco's age. Skinny frame. A drawn, angular face. Eyes closed. There's blood everywhere, although Marco can't tell where it's coming from--maybe the wound is hidden under his shirt--and he thinks that he sees the beginnings of bruises blossoming in a thick collar around his neck. 

"Eren," he pleads, eyes fixed on the stranger's chest in search of any sign of life. He thinks there might be a faint rise and fall there, but it's too dim to be sure of such a minuscule movement. 

Eren hesitates for a moment. "Marco, I don't know if I--"

"Yes, you can," he answers, layering confidence into his words. He adds, "You can use me if you need to."

Eren's magic really is a force to be reckoned with. Marco has seen him do incredible things before, like breathe life into one of Mikasa's folded paper cranes, or shove a man backwards without ever touching him. But while Eren's parlor tricks are well and good, where he really shines is in healing. Marco sometimes wonders if he'd inherited it from his father, the doctor, but had never really asked. Eren doesn't like to talk about his birth family much.'Not much use talking about them,' he always says, 'when I've got Mikasa and Armin with me. _They're_ my family.' 

Eren can mend broken bones and soothe burns when needed, but at great cost to himself. And this looks like an especially daunting task. 

Eren throws one last dubious look over his shoulder at Marco. Then he rubs his hands together to warm them up, and places them on the stranger's chest. 

The stranger jolts, and Eren cries out, startled. Marco tenses, ready to help if needed. 

"Shit--" Eren growls out, jaw clenched tightly. 

The spicy scent of Eren's magic spills into the air. But there's a sharp edge to the smell. Marco coughs, eyes watering, as the smell only grows stronger. 

"Eren, are you--"

"Something's wrong," he interrupts. Marco can see the sweat beading on his forehead. The stink of cinnamon and that bitter edge is overwhelming--

Smoke. 

It smells like smoke, Marco realizes. 

"Eren, let go of him!"

"I can't," Eren says, his voice strained. "I can't."

"What do you mean, you can't?" Marco asks, his voice going up in pitch as he starts to panic. Damn it, he's no sorcerer, he doesn't know what's happening, he can't help, what if Eren's magic blows up in his face and--

Eren lets out a choked sob through his gritted teeth, clearly in pain. "Marco, I--he's burning my hands, and I can't--"

_Sorry, mystery dead man. But Eren comes first._

 Marco crouches down next to Eren and starts trying to pry his hands from the stranger's body, to no avail. He can feel the heat radiating from the stranger's skin. 

"Marco--"

"I'm trying," he spits out, pulling desperately at Eren's wrists. 

At that moment, the stranger bolts upright, effectively startling them both into silence. 

The man has light-colored eyes that practically seem to glow in the dark. He whips his head around from side to side, eyes darting back and forth, breathing shallow and rapid. 

"Hey," Marco tries. "Are you okay? Can you tell us your name?"

He seems to take notice of them for the first time. "Who are you?" he demands, completely ignoring Marco's words. His eyes settle on Eren, whose hands are still awkwardly stuck to his chest. The stranger's lip curls. "Don't. Touch. Me."

And with that, Eren is released from whatever force had been keeping him there. He cradles his hands protectively to his chest, glaring at the stranger with reproach. 

Marco makes a mental note to check out Eren's hands later. 

"Who did this to you?" Marco asks, as gently as he can muster. 

The stranger blinks, turning so that he's looking at Marco directly. 

"Who are you?"

A question for a question. 

"I'm Marco," he says. "And that's Eren."

"Yeah," Eren pipes up. "And Eren saved your sorry ass, so you should be less of a dick to him."

"Eren, please stop referring to yourself in the third person," Marco chides. The stranger frowns slightly, evidently confused. 

"Marco? And Eren? I don't... I don't know you..."

"No, you don't," Marco affirms. "Now, who are you?"

"You mean you don't recognize me?" The question comes out fast and harsh, like cannonfire.

Marco blinks owlishly, taken aback at that. He looks the bloodied young man up and down again, but he doesn't seem familiar in the slightest. "No...?"

The stranger visibly relaxes at that. "Good."

A beat of silence passes before Marco prompts him again, "Your name?"

"'m Jean," he says, trying to stand up. "And I--fuck."

He falls back down on his butt, earning a poorly hidden snicker from Eren. 

Jean scowls and opens his mouth, presumably in preparation of some sort of insult. 

Marco doesn't have time for this. "Eren, go find Mikasa and get her home."

"But what about you?"

Marco glances at Jean. "I'll carry him."

"Wha--" Eren starts. 

Marco cuts him off. "We can't just leave him here, but I don't want to slow you and Mikasa down. We've still got to get the shield home safely. Job's not quite finished yet."

Eren frowns. "I don't like this plan. I don't like splitting up."

"Yeah, well." Marco smiles at him as reassuringly as he can. "Don't worry. I'll meet you at home, okay? I can take care of myself. I managed just fine by myself before I met you guys, remember?" 

Eren opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again. 

"I hate it when you make sense, Bodt." And with a shake of his head and one last glance--tender, almost, but Marco knows that can't be--Eren disappears into the dark woods. 

He's alone with Jean. 

Jean squints up at him. "So, when you said you were going to carry me, what did you mean--"

Marco hoists him up, biting back a grin at the undignified yelp that escapes from Jean's mouth as he slings him over his shoulder like a sack of flour. He's surprisingly light, actually--almost as thin as Armin. 

"Ow, fuck," Jean hisses, and that wipes the smile right off of Marco's face. 

"I'm sorry, are you okay?"

"Yeah, peachy," Jean says, though he doesn't sound fine in the slightest. 

Marco decides not to dwell on that too much. They've got quite a journey ahead of them. 

 

 


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You mean you haven't told him?" Eren asks.  
> Marco just shrugs.  
> "Told me what?" Jean demands.  
> Eren spreads his arms wide in a grand, sweeping gesture. Marco rolls his eyes at his theatrics.  
> "Welcome," he says, "to the Thieves' Forest."

It's strange, Marco thinks, how vulnerable he feels without Eren and Mikasa.

Sure, he'd managed by himself before he met them--if you could call half-starving on the streets  _managing_ \--but after the fateful day where he'd first encountered the closest thing to living family that he had, he'd never felt alone again.

If this job had gone as planned, he would be halfway home with his two accomplices by his side, laughing and joking about the close calls they had, and planning what to do with the money once they sold the shield. 

"This thing'll make us rich," Eren would say, patting their prize fondly. Eren said that about every object they took. Of course, they never got one hundred percent of the profit, since their middleman always demanded a quarter of the profit, and half of the remaining money had to go to the guild, but  _rich_ by Eren's standards meant full stomachs and sufficient firewood for the winter, and they usually had enough for that. 

Marco has often wondered what it would be like to be  _actually_ rich, to have the kind of affluence that means you can buy and own a house, and never have to worry about going hungry, and have enough money to spend on beautiful, useless things. Things like the treasures that he and the rest of the thieves' guild pinched.

But at eighteen, just past the cusp of adulthood, it doesn't look like Marco will be earning a stable income for a while yet to come, so dreams of owning a house of his own have to be put on hold.

Traveling with Jean slung over his shoulder is different from traveling with Mikasa and Eren. Jean, for one thing, weighs a lot less than some of the baubles that Marco has had to haul in the past.

For another thing, Jean is a bit more... loud.

While Mikasa and Eren know how imperative silence can be sometimes, and try to speak in hushed tones when they want to make conversation (which isn't even entirely necessary; over the years, the three of them have grown close enough to be comfortable even in complete silence, just enjoying each others' company and soaking in the fact that they have once again gotten away), Jean doesn't seem to have volume control. At all.

"What the hell were you guys doing in the forest, anyway?" Jean asks. Marco winces at the way that his voice rings out in the night air. The way he asks it, it doesn't seem like just a question; his tone makes it sound like more of a demand. 

"Well," Marco begins, softly, "it's kind of a long story." 

"Oh, really?"

"Yes." Marco steps on a stick by accident. The sharp  _crack_ is deafening to his ears. Somewhere off in the distance, he hears the rustling of something in the bushes. He's probably spooked some critter back into its den. 

"I've got time for a long story," Jean says, and his voice is quieter this time. 

Marco isn't sure what to say. What if he can't trust Jean? What if they get turned in? What if...

"Also," Jean adds, interrupting Marco's thoughts, "it's really boring just dangling here and staring at the ground." 

For someone who was just recently pretty much dead, Jean sure is demanding. Or maybe the near-death experience is what has made him so demanding. 

"Tell you what," Marco says, "I'll explain I was in the woods if you explain why  _you_ were in the woods." 

Jean is silent. Marco counts his footsteps while he waits for an answer.  _Crunch._ One.  _Crunch._ Two.  _Crunch._ Three.

He gets to twenty before Jean answers, "Hell if I know." 

Marco raises an eyebrow, forgetting that Jean can't see him from his position.

"Really? You have no idea at all why somebody would try to kill you and then dump you in the forest?"

"My head hurts," Jean says, attempting to change the subject with no subtlety at all. 

Marco decides to humor him. "Do you need me to stop?" 

"No." A pause. "But, uh, all the blood is kind of rushing to my head at this angle..." 

Marco hums, thinking. He takes a glance up at the sky, trying to catch a glimpse of the stars--little pinpricks of white in a blanket of blue-black satin--through the branches of the trees. He finds the Big Dipper. Good, he's still headed north. 

"Do you think you can walk now?" Marco asks.

"...It's worth a shot."

 Marco crouches down a little before easing Jean down.  

 "Ow," Jean mutters, wincing. 

"Where are you hurt?" His mother hen mode snaps on in an instant. 

"Ribs. No, it's okay." He swats away Marco's hands. "Just really sore." 

Marco chews on his lower lip. "Spirits, what'd they do to you?"

Jean just shrugs. He's still leaning heavily on Marco, and the way his legs wobble remind Marco of a baby deer first learning how to walk. 

"How much further do we have to go?" Jean asks bravely. 

"...Maybe two miles?"

Jean groans, although whether from pain or distress, Marco can't tell. 

They still have enough time to make it back home before daybreak, but Marco doesn't want to risk getting caught by any dawn patrols. And he highly doubts that Jean is capable of walking that far very quickly. 

"I'll carry you," he decides. 

"But we've already established that it doesn't work---hey!"

That last part is because Marco gallantly sweeps him off of his feet, supporting him in his arms bridal-style. 

Jean wraps his arms around Marco's neck tightly, presumably out of fear of being dropped. 

Marco winces a little at his grip. "Jean, hey, loosen up a bit..."

"You can't be serious about this," Jean retorts, craning his head back in order to stare up at him incredulously. 

"But I am," Marco answers with a grin, and with that he resumes walking. 

* * *

 Jean falls asleep after a while. Marco appreciates the quiet, especially after the stream of grumbled protests that he had made about "being carried like a girl" and "I'm not completely helpless" and "How the fuck are your arms not tired, Marco? How are you even this fit?" (Marco hadn't really minded the last one, though.) 

His arms are starting to ache a little, but Jean is much lighter than any decorative hunk of metal. It's almost as though his bones were hollow, like a bird's; but that can't be the case. Jean has solid bones, and Marco has a feeling that he could grow to be strong, but the sharp angles of his face and thin, bony fingers suggest that he hasn't been fed enough for a long, long time. 

At last, he comes to a crossroads in the woods. To his right is the well-worn path, the one used by merchants on their way to town. To his left is the overgrown path, tangled with threatening brambles and spiky bushes. 

Marco goes to the left. He's on his way home at last. 

The brambles shrink away from him as he walks; the forest here knows him, thanks to an enchantment that Armin and Eren had helped cast. The forest recognizes all of the guild members, but no one else; it is their home, their protector, their savior. 

The sky is just beginning to turn from midnight-blue to the dark gray of pre-dawn. But Marco doesn't have to worry about getting caught, now. He's home. He's safe. 

He follows the enchanted path with a smile on his face. Here, the trees are grow densely, their branches interlaced overhead in a canopy that pretty much blots out the sky. They're barely taller than he is. Marco loves this ceiling of rustling leaves; at night, it makes him feel safe, and during the day, it filters the sunlight down so that it casts shimmering, dappled gold rays on the ground. 

But the trees get taller and taller as he goes, and soon the canopy is far, far overhead. 

Jean stirs in his sleep and blinks his eyes open blearily. 

"...Father?" he mumbles, and Marco can't tell whether that tinge in his voice is hope or fear. 

"No, just me," Marco says. 

"Oh."

He doesn't sound disappointed, exactly. Just a bit confused and disoriented. 

"We're here," Marco says, looking up. He can make out the twinkling lights of lanterns strung up in the branches, as well as the bridges that form walkways from tree to tree. It's quiet, still; must be too early in the morning for most of the guild to be voluntarily awake. 

He takes in a deep breath, savoring the familiar earthy scent of wood and dirt. 

Home sweet home: the fortress in the trees. 

There's an excited whoop from above, and a rope ladder tumbles down. 

"Took you long enough, Marco!" Eren shouts, and although Marco can't quite see the look on his face clearly---he's too high up---Marco knows that he's wearing a face-splitting grin. 

Jean blinks. "What the hell?"

"Hope you're not afraid of heights," Marco quips, leaning back against the sturdy base of one of the great trees that support the guild's home. 

"Those trees are fucking _huge!_ " Jean is now officially awake. He squirms in Marco's grasp, evidently wanting to get down. 

"Can you climb?" Marco asks, pointing at the rope ladder that Eren had so kindly thrown down for them. 

Jean eyes it warily. "Climb?"

"Yes."

Jean looks up slowly. The first platform is about forty feet up. 

"...shit."

* * *

It turns out that Jean's injuries won't allow him to climb, so Marco calls for Eren to come down, instead. 

Eren clambers down as easily as an agile monkey. He jumps off instead of going down the last few rungs and sticks the landing effortlessly.

Showoff. 

"You and Mikasa got the shield up?" Marco asks. 

Eren rolls his mismatched eyes good-naturedly. "Um, yeah. You might be the oldest, but we're not children, Marco."

"In the eyes of the law, you are," he replies. 

The sun is rising steadily, now; Marco catches a glimpse of the rosy pink sky through what few gaps between branches there are. 

"A good thing, too," Eren says. He laughs. "Or else I'd be looking at an even longer prison sentence than I am already."

"Don't remind me," Marco groans. He tries not to think about the legal consequences of their line of work too much. He estimates that he'd be serving at least a decade or two of incarceration for all the things he's stolen. 

Eren waves a hand dismissively. "Don't worry. As long as we don't get caught, we'll be fine." 

He makes it sound so simple, with that breezy grin of his and wind-mussed hair.

Jean looks back and forth between the two of them. "'...don't...get...caught?"

"You mean you haven't told him?" Eren asks. 

Marco just shrugs.

"Told me what?" Jean demands.

Eren spreads his arms wide in a grand, sweeping gesture. Marco rolls his eyes at his theatrics. 

"Welcome," he says, "to the Thieves' Forest."  

The effect on Jean is immediate. He flinches away from them both, eyes wide. 

"Hey, hey." Eren frowns slightly. "Do I smell or something, Marco?" 

Marco tries for a smile, but the way that Jean is looking at them with such fear in his eyes makes him feel as though he's been punched in the gut. "Well, I mean, _I'm_ pretty clean. Can't say the same for you, Eren." 

"If you're looking for a ransom, you won't be getting any," Jean blurts out, and the sudden declaration startles them both. "My father won't--he doesn't care--"

"Whoa, hey, slim it," Eren snaps. "First of all, we're not looking for a ransom, dipshit. We might be thieves, but _kidnapping_ doesn't fall in our range. That isn't something that we do."

"Then why else--" Jean begins.

Eren cuts him off. "Second of all, take your fucking shirt off." 

That stuns Jean into silence, though not compliance. "I... er... what?" 

Eren huffs and reaches for the buttons on Jean's shirt himself, but Jean quickly withdraws.

 "Don't touch me," Jean spits, clutching the bloodied fabric tightly. 

"Jean, please," Marco pleads, adding honey to his voice. "We don't want to hurt you. We want to help."

The grayish light of dawn has started to give way to bolder daylight, but even now, Jean's face looks pale and gaunt. 

His eyelids flutter as Marco's magic washes over him. 

"You can trust us," Marco adds. He puts all the sincerity he can muster into the statement. There's a tiny twinge of guilt in the back of his mind about using his abilities to manipulate Jean, but he squashes it down and tells himself that it's for his own good. 

Jean hesitates, then slowly undoes the buttons of his shirt, moving as though he's caught in a dream. 

Eren raises an eyebrow at Marco. Marco pretends not to see. 

It takes the pacified Jean a while to work with each button, but as the filthy shirt comes away--it might have been a white shirt, once, but there's dirt and mud and dried blood  _everywhere_  and, frankly, Marco doubts that it has been washed within the past few months---the extent of Jean's injuries are revealed. 

Marco sucks in a quick breath. Spirits. 

There's two blossoming bruises that look suspiciously like handprints turning his throat purple and black, and all along his torso, there are splotches of dark bruises and swelling scrapes and partially scabbed-over cuts. Some of the injuries look fresher than others. 

Eren whistles. "They did a real number on this guy." 

Marco bites his lip. "Can you help him, or--"

"I'd rather not." Eren crosses his arms, and Marco notices the bandages wrapped around his hands for the first time. 

"Eren, are you... Are they...?"

"Burned," he replies, shaking his head. "Hell if I know  _how,_ but..." 

Jean starts to blink rapidly as his Marco-induced trance wears off. 

"Would Armin have something to help?" Marco suggests. 

Eren grins. "Definitely. If you can wrangle Horseface over here into behaving, I'll get Armin to come down."

"Horseface?" Marco asks incredulously, just as the awakening Jean demands, "What the hell just happened?"

Eren just laughs, and climbs back up the ladder.

Marco hopes it doesn't hurt his hands too much. 

* * *

 "How the hell did you do that?" 

Marco shrugs helplessly, trying to avoid Jean's accusing stare. It doesn't work; he can still feel those piercing eyes drilling holes through his skull, even if he's not looking. 

"It was like I didn't have control of myself anymore," Jean says. Marco looks up from his boots. He's scowling, although Marco can't tell whether it's from confusion or anger. He hopes it's the former. "And all I wanted to do was listen to you." 

Marco gnaws on his lower lip anxiously. He's heard those words before, uttered by his father:  _"Your mother had the most beautiful voice, Marco. When she sang, I just wanted to drop everything and listen. And as long as she kept singing, or kept talking, or anything---just as long as I could hear her voice---I'd have been happy to do nothing else but listen."_

"I'm told I have a way with words," Marco says by way of response. 

Jean doesn't buy it, he can tell, but he drops the subject (although he does keep staring at Marco).

But Marco is pretty sure that Jean himself might be hiding a trick or two up his sleeve--after all, touching him had burned Eren's hands--so maybe they're even. A secret for a secret. 

Jean shivers slightly as a breeze dances past them, and Marco is struck again by how skinny he is. He can count Jean's individual ribs, beneath the bruised and beaten skin. 

Jean crosses his arms, flushing. "Hey, quit staring!"

"Sorry," Marco says automatically. He forces himself to take his eyes off of his abused torso, and instead focuses on Jean's face. He frowns, not liking the bags under Jean's eyes, nor his hollow cheeks. "When's the last time you had a proper meal?"

Jean holds his concerned gaze briefly before suddenly becoming very interested in the dirt. 

"Dunno," he mumbled. "'s been a while."

Marco's heart goes out to the boy. He knows the dull, hollow ache of hunger all too well; he makes a mental note to take Jean to get fattened up by Connie and Sasha as soon as possible. 

"Once Armin gets a good look at you, I'll get you some food," he promises. 

Jean blinks, taken aback. "Oh. I, er... Thanks."

Eren returns, this time with a very frazzled-looking Armin in tow. 

"Morning, Armin," Marco says, offering the blond his brightest smile. 

Armin smiles back, although he looks rather out of breath, most likely because he appears to be carrying several bags' worth of medical supplies. 

"This is Jean," Eren informs him. Armin nods.

"Nice to meet you, Jean," he says, blue eyes flitting over each of the many injuries adorning his torso. 

Jean shrinks a little under the scrutiny. "Um, hi." 

Armin doesn’t question the injuries—whether or not Eren has already briefed him about them, Marco isn’t sure, but Armin is as collected as any professional—and sets his bags down on the ground gently.

“Could you do me a favor, Jean?” Armin asks. “Take in a deep breath.”

Jean does as told, inhaling deeply, but his face twists and Marco wonders if he’s going to throw up.

“Cracked ribs, then,” Armin deduces. A little crease forms between his eyebrows. “Jean, do you mind if I do a little bit of palpating?”

“What?”

“I’m going to feel around your ribs a little bit,” Armin explains. “So that I can tell which ones are broken.”

Jean cringes, but mutters his consent.

Armin moves closer to him. Marco watches, fascinated, as he gently presses around Jean’s chest and sides, pausing briefly whenever Jean lets out a little gasp or squeak of pain.

“Not much I can do for cracked ribs,” Armin admits, stepping back. “You’ll just need a lot of rest. And maybe I’ll be able to find some painkillers around somewhere. However,” he adds, undoing the drawstring of one of his bags, “I can help you with those cuts and bruises.” He pauses, wrinkling his nose. "You'll probably need to clean up a bit. Marco, could you go get some water?" 

"Sure." Marco starts to walk away, but Eren stops him.

"No need for that," he says, and Marco can't help but smile at the excited gleam in his eyes. "I've been working on a new trick. Mind if I test it?"

"By all means," Armin answers, glancing at him curiously.

Eren takes in a deep breath, and then the familiar spicy scent wraps around them in the air.

Eren appears to be concentrating hard--his jaw is clenched, and his brow is furrowed--but nothing seems to happen, at first.

There's a heavy silence while they wait for Eren to finish... whatever it is that he's trying to do... and Jean shifts his weight from foot to foot awkwardly.

Eren's face is starting to go a bit red, and Marco is about to suggest that he stop before he explodes or something, but then a white fog begins to take form around them.

Marco's jaw drops.

Eren holds out a hand, and all the fog starts to condense, until he's left holding a wobbling sphere of liquid water about the size of a melon in his hand.

"Ta-da," he announces, giving them a wiped-out smile. There's sweat beading up on his forehead and nose, and his face is still flushed from the exertion.

Armin asks, "How did you--"

"There's water vapor in the air," Eren says. "'S what Annie said when she showed me this trick, at any rate. So I just pulled it out of the air."

Marco raises an eyebrow. Annie is the most talented of their guild when it comes to working magic, but she doesn't share her skills very often.

Armin smiles. "Annie's clever."

"At any rate, is this enough to clean him up?" Eren asks.

Armin nods. "Should be."

With that, Armin sets to work. He pulls out a linen washcloth from his bag and dips it into Eren's bubble of water, then wipes it over Jean's skin. The washcloth comes away muddy and black with filth--Armin wrinkles his nose at that--and leaves Jean's skin clean.

Jean is even paler without the layers of dirt darkening his skin. He's not a pretty kind of pale, like those alabaster statues that some of the nobles commission and place in their houses, but rather more the weak bluish-white color of skim milk. He doesn't look like he's seen in the sun in a long while; Marco wonders yet again where he came from, and what his story is. 

Jean shifts his weight from foot to foot, and his hands fidget at his sides. The way he avoids all of their gazes makes it evident that he is uncomfortable with the attention. Marco notes the unkempt state of Jean's hair; the hair on top of his head is a lighter, almost blond color, but the sides are dark (and matted. Terribly so). Marco wrinkles his nose unconsciously at the mess. As soon as Jean has recovered well enough to walk a longer distance, Marco promises himself, he'll take him to the river for a good cleaning. For purposes of avoiding infection, this cleanse will probably do the trick, but Jean really does need a proper bath. 

Armin doesn't seem to need any help. This is, after all, what he does best. Marco crosses his arms, disliking the feeling of having idle hands. 

"Do you need anything else, Armin?" he asks, eager to help.

Armin looks at him briefly before he goes back to wiping Jean clean. He answers Marco's question with another question: "You've been awake all night, haven't you?"

"...Yes."

"Then what I need," the blond says, "is for you to give yourself a break." His voice is kind. Marco opens his mouth to protest, but Armin continues. "And I know you're going to say that you can't go to sleep since the sun is up, and you have things to do, but at least get something to eat, okay? Autumn is coming, and I don't want you getting sick."

His stomach rumbles at the idea of getting something to eat. Armin smiles knowingly.

"Seriously, Marco," Eren chimes in, "go rest a little."

"Weren't you up all night, too?" Marco asks.

Eren grins sheepishly. "Uh. About that. I actually dozed off for a bit while I was waiting up for you. Sorry."

"No, no. That's good. And you didn't have to wait for me," Marco babbles.

Eren meets his eyes, and a tiny thrill goes down Marco's spine at the intensity of his green and gold stare.

"Marco, you idiot," he says, "of course I have to wait for you." He grins. "We've known each other for all eternity, practically. We're a team. And I don't mind. Now, shoo. Go see if Sasha and Connie are up yet."

"Right, okay." Armin is making progress; Jean is about halfway clean now. "I'll be back soon."

"There's no rush," Armin tells him. "Really. You're not missing out on anything. Watching me disinfect cuts is not the most thrilling thing." 

Marco laughs at that. Reassured, he goes over to the dangling ladder, and starts to climb. 

* * *

Climbing up a flimsy structure when you have Marco's build isn't exactly an easy feat, but over the years, he's all but perfected it.

Even though he's grown used to high heights, his palms still grow a little slippery and his stomach still lurches uncertainly when the rope ladder swings too much.

Marco had considered constructing stairs to make the ascent easier, before, but upon further meditation on the idea (and Armin pointing out that a staircase could potentially compromise the guild's safety in case of an attack) he had given up. 

He climbs on, ignoring the vertigo that comes with the ascent, and resists the urge to look down. He had learned early on that the best thing to do for keeping your balance is to keep looking upwards, so that's what he does, fixing his gaze on the leaves up above. 

Some of the leaves are starting to turn shades of yellow and orange. Armin is right; fall is on its way. Marco has always rather liked autumn, with its warm colors and brisk air. 

He reaches a platform at last and hoists himself up. The boards creak slightly beneath his weight. 

Marco pauses for a moment, admiring the way sunlight streams down between the leaves and casts dappled shadows all around. 

The slight smell of smoke informs him that yes, the kitchen is in use, and yes, somebody is cooking a hot meal. Marco follows his nose. 

He hopes Sasha is making hotcakes, although that's unlikely considering that no one has been to town recently enough to buy flour. Maybe he'll drag Eren and Mikasa and Armin over to Rose for an errand run, later. 

The kitchen door is wide open. Marco peers inside. 

"Hey, Connie. Hey, Sasha. And is that Annie in there with you?"

"Marco!"

Sasha abandons her post by the cooking fire (the whole kitchen is charmed, so the flames don't eat at the wood) and attacks him in a flurry. He chokes and reels back slightly, overwhelmed by the tight bear hug and mouthful of reddish-brown hair that he gets. 

Connie grins at him and waves with a slime-covered hand, evidently in the middle of cracking eggs. 

"Hello, Marco." Annie has taken over Sasha's place. Marco hears sizzling; Annie must be minding whatever it is that Sasha has frying over the fire. 

"What's for breakfast?" he asks, spitting Sasha's hair out of his mouth. She laughs and releases him from her clutches. 

"Brisket," comes Connie's reply. "Unless you prefer eggs?"

"I'll take the brisket, thanks," Marco says. He could use something hearty in his stomach. 

"Almost ready," Annie informs him. 

"So what's this I hear about you dragging home some new boy?" Sasha asks, brown eyes gleaming. 

"He's not a recruit, Sash," he says. Then, "Wait, how do you even know about this?"

"Eren wouldn't shut up about it," Connie answers with a grin. "That, and we might have overheard him and Mikasa telling Armin about what happened to Eren's hands."

A pang of guilt twinged in Marco's stomach at the mention of what had happened to Eren's hands. "Was it really bad?"

"Wasn't bad, wasn't great," Connie tells him. "But Armin had some stuff to help him, and Eren heals fast, you know. He'll probably be fine by tomorrow."

Of course. Eren could heal himself, too. Relief washes through him. "How about Mikasa? How is she?"

"Still sleeping, last I saw," Sasha says. "Good thing, too. You know how she gets when she doesn't have enough sleep."

Marco chuckles. That was the first thing he had learned about Mikasa: don't wake her up when she's sleeping unless there's an absolute emergency. There are few things more terrifying in this world than a sleep-deprived Mikasa.

Annie deftly flips the grilled chunk of beef onto a plate, then hands the plate to Marco.

"It's hot," she warns him, tucking a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear.

He smiles, which earns a tentative half-smile in return. "Thanks, Annie." There's a fork lying on the table where Connie is working. Marco picks it up, careful to touch only the wooden handle, and inspects it. It seems clean enough; there's no leftover food stuck to the metal prongs of the fork, and that's good enough for him.

He stabs the fork into the hunk of meat, mouth watering. He should probably find a knife, he knows, but no one here cares about manners and it's as though the presence of food has turned his stomach into a growling monster.

He tears a bite out of the brisket a little more aggressively than needed, but it just smells _so good_ and he  _has to put something in his stomach right this instant_.

"This is so good," he says, voice a little muffled by his chewing.

Sasha laughs. "No talking while you're eating, you dork. Don't choke."  

Marco nods and swallows.

At that moment, a rather disheveled-looking Mikasa strides through the kitchen door. Her jet-black hair is tangled in a rat's nest, and she's still in her simple nightdress, an ivory-colored shift that flows down to her knees. And, of course, her trademark scarlet scarf is wound loosely about her neck. All in all, she looks far too comfortable and sleepy to be completely awake.

"Morning," Marco greets her cheerily. She looks at him and yawns, stretching her arms above her head. Marco is reminded of a cat awakening from a nap.

"Hi, Marco," she says. She blinks, still looking slightly disoriented. "You're back? Where's the guy from the woods?"

"Armin's taking care of him," he says. "And Eren's with them. You should go back to sleep, Mikasa."

She shakes her head. "Can't. Need food," she grumbles. That's about as eloquent as she can be this early in the morning. Out of the trio of Eren, her, and Armin, Mikasa is the only one who is not a morning person at all, strangely enough.  

Marco grins at Connie and Sasha. "You heard the lady."

"D'you have coffee?" The dark-haired girl inquires.

Annie shakes her head. "Fresh out."

Mikasa sighs.

"I was thinking of heading into town in a few hours," Marco says through another mouthful of half-chewed brisket. "I could pick up some supplies for the kitchen while I'm there?"

"You're a lifesaver, Freckles," Sasha says, laughing like a lark. She claps him on the back. "Okay, so we need coffee--"

"Flour," Connie calls.

"We're low on salt," Annie interjects. "And I think Armin needed some ink--"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down a bit," Marco says. He swallows and pauses to get another bite before continuing. "Can you guys write it down for me?"

"Sure thing," Connie says. He grins. "What, is your memory going bad in your old age?"

"Connie, he hasn't slept all night," Sasha points out.

"Fair enough."

"I'm going to check on Jean," Marco announces, having finished his breakfast. He puts his plate and fork in the bin full of dirty dishes carefully.

"Have fun," Connie yells after him.

* * *

 When Marco returns, Jean is dressed in a shirt that hangs loosely off of his thin frame, and Armin is putting his supplies back in his bags. Marco recognizes the shirt, a slightly frayed linen thing with sleeves that cut off at the elbow, as one of Eren's.

"Hey, Marco," Eren greets him. There's the pungent smell of herbs hanging in the air, undoubtedly from whatever ointment or poultice Armin has applied to Jean's injuries.

"Hi, Eren." He addresses the exhausted-looking patient. "Hi. Are you feeling okay?"

Jean purses his lips. "Whatever he put on my cuts, it stings like a bitch."

"Good," Armin says happily. "That means that it's working."

Jean grumbles at that. Then his knees buckle and he falls on his rear end, cursing.

"Graceful," Eren comments, and Jean's pale cheeks flare crimson.

"Shut up."

Marco squats down at his side. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he mutters. "Just tired is all."

"He'll feel better after he gets some rest," Armin says.

"I could bring a blanket down for you," Marco offers. "So you could try and sleep?"

Jean looks anxious at that. "No, don't. It's okay."

"It's no trouble--"

"No thanks," he says, and before Marco can protest, he curls up on his side in the dirt. "I can't sleep with a blanket. Really."

Armin gathers his supply bags in his arms, preparing to head up. "Are you sure? You should probably keep warm."

"I'm good. Thanks."

"You should sing, Marco," Eren suggests, a grin spreading across his face. "It'll help him sleep."

"I'm not a _child_ ," Jean objects from his place on the ground. The wind flutters across his face, ruffling his hair slightly. "I don't need a lullaby."

"But you haven't heard Marco sing," Eren laughs. "C'mon, man. You've gotta sing, please?"

Marco blushes. "Eren..."

"I'm serious, Marco. It is vital to Jean's recovery. You have to."  

Marco hums. "What do you want me to sing?"

"Anything," Eren answers, eyes shining. Marco could almost laugh at that; he looks like a child on their birthday.

Marco thinks for a moment, trying to remember a lullaby. Then he begins. _"It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee..."_

It's not a lullaby, but his father always used to sing it, and Marco can remember always picturing the beaches of his hometown as the "kingdom by the sea."

He misses it. He misses Jinae so much, with its fine sand and salt-scented air and blazing sun and open skies. Inexplicably, he feels tears pricking his eyes.

When had he last set foot in the seaport town? Marco tries to remember. He'd been forced to leave at eleven. That had been seven years ago.

Spirits, he hasn't seen the ocean in seven years, he realizes, and that thought makes something in his chest hurt. The sea had once been an everyday fixture in his life, but now...

Suddenly, he feels that the cool air in these woods is too dry, that the canopy of tree branches overhead is suffocating him rather than sheltering him, that the whisper of rustling leaves is too quiet, and that he's missing the roaring crash of the waves against the beach.

Eren is watching him, rapt, and Marco notices that his old friend's eyes are moist.

 _"_   _And neither the angels in Heaven above, nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee..."_  

The words come out from his throat sounding a bit rough, but neither Jean nor Eren seem to notice. Jean's eyes are closed. Marco hopes that he's being lulled to sleep. 

This was his father's favorite song, the one that he would hum to himself with a voice as coarse as salt, or would sing while he stared out the window, lost in some faraway realm that Marco couldn't see. 

When he finishes the song, there's an itch in his soul that he can't quite scratch. 

"That was amazing," Eren whispers after a moment. 

Marco glances at Jean for feedback, but receives none. Their patient is fast asleep, chest rising and falling steadily. Jean looks smaller while he sleeps, somehow, and Marco feels a rush of protectiveness wash through him.

"You should go eat," Marco tells Eren. "I'll watch him." 

Eren raises an eyebrow. "You sure?"

"Yeah," he replies. He tries for a grin. "Can't have you starving yourself, can we?"

Eren tilts his head, frowning slightly. "Something's wrong, isn't it."

"No," he says. A pause. Eren doesn't believe him. "I'm just in a weird mood. I don't know. That song just... reminded me of home."

"But you  _are_ home, Marco." Maybe Eren believes that; maybe Eren doesn't miss his own home in Shiganshina at all. But Marco's a little different.

But the way Eren says it makes Marco forget about long-ago beaches and songs. This forest is his home. His friends are here, and that's what counts. There's nothing left in Jinae, after all; that's why he'd left. 

"Yeah," he says softly. "I know." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marco is actually singing a poem by Edgar Allen Poe. It's called "Annabel Lee," if you want to look it up. I dunno, I've always read it to a tune in my head. It just seems like a poem that should be set to music. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)  
> And thank you so much for leaving behind such positive comments. Hopefully I'll be able to get the next chapter up soon, now that school is almost out for the summer. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr (URL is the same as my username on here) and I'm always in the mood to meet new people and swap headcanons, so feel free to drop by!
> 
> Feedback is always greatly appreciated, so if you have any comments or critiques on this chapter, I'd love to hear it :)
> 
> Until next time!


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Jean bolts upright, trembling and sweating and gasping for breath as the last traces of his dream cling to him like the sticky filaments of a spider web. 
> 
> It takes him a moment to remember where he is. The dirt beneath him is soft, much softer than the stone floor of his old cell. The smell of earth fills his nostrils, warm and rich and...
> 
> And something smells bitter."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: The beginning part (in italics) is kind of bloody, if you want to skip that. (It's an attempted murder.) Um. Yeah.
> 
> Sorry for the delay in updates. Turns out that summer break is going to be just as busy as school.
> 
> Onward!

_Everything is too bright._

_It's night. Jean doesn't recall ever seeing a night as bright as this one, with moonlight that doesn't so much wash everything silver as bleach it to stark black and white. This can't be real life, but here he is. Jean squeezes his eyes shut in a vain attempt to block out his surroundings._

_"Hey, kid." Oh no. No no no no no. He'll never forget that voice, that rumbling bass._

_"Where are you taking me?" Jean asks. It's like he has no control over his vocal chords; the words come out on their own. He hates this, hates that he's being forced to relive this again, hates the quaver in his voice that makes his kidnappers laugh._

_Well, no. Not kidnappers. Not when he'd voluntarily walked out of his cell, trusting the guards that he'd thought he had come to an understanding with._

_"You don't have to worry about that, kid," another voice speaks up. It's the girl with the freckles and seemingly permanent scowl, this time. "And we're not taking you anywhere else after this. This is the last stop."_

_No. No no no no no no no..._

_Jean is powerless as the burly blond guy with the deep voice shoves him against the wall. The brick is rough and cold against his back. Jean kicks his legs frantically, flailing, trying to get some purchase. He finds none. He's held fast._

_The pressure on his chest is immense. Jean gasps for air, feeling like his rib cage is going to collapse in on his lungs._

_“Hold still, would you?” the blond guy growls. “Bert, the knife.”_

_The third member of the party, the tall, olive-complexioned one, holds out a dagger with trembling hands._

_“Bert, love, I haven’t got any free hands,” the blond says, his voice the slightest bit strained. He’s using both arms to hold the thrashing Jean in place._

_"I--I can't--"_

_The girl snatches the dagger away from him in an instant. “Fine. I’ll do it myself, then.”_

_The steel blade of the knife twinkles in the pale moonlight, as iridescent as the stars above. It’s beautiful, in a cruel way, Jean thinks, the words bubbling into his throbbing head._

_He’s going to die, and he’s thinking in fucking poetry. Of all the ways to go._

"Jean." 

_It sounds as though someone is calling his name, but whoever it is must be a long, long way away._

_The steel is cold against his skin, but the blood that runs out from the cuts is warm. It’s a strange sensation, the feeling of warm liquid dribbling down his body. He doesn’t scream, just clenches his jaw and tries to swallow the strangled noises that well up in his throat._

_The warmth of his blood, however, quickly grows warmer until it stops being warm and starts to burn._

_Steel. Fuck steel._

_Jean has heard before that steel has this effect on people like him, but he couldn’t ever imagine it happening to him in real life. But here he is, and his skin is starting to blister, and the stench of something burning fills his nostrils and oh spirits his body is burning, actually burning, where the steel had touched him._

"Jean." 

_Again, that voice. Jean would turn his head to look around, if he could, but all he can do is dart his eyes back and forth. He sees nothing, no one. Not a single other soul besides the three right in front of them, their eyes cold and detached and empty_

_Jean’s mouth falls open in a silent scream. His desperation renewed, he begins to fight harder, and with a low growl the blond guy readjusts his grip so that he's pinning Jean against the wall by the throat._

_He can't breathe. It feels as though his windpipe is collapsing in on itself. He can hear his heartbeat hammering away, barely audible over the rush of blood in his ears. He squeezes his eyes shut; all he can see is red, projected behind his eyelids. Maybe the veins in his eyes have burst. He doesn't really know. All he knows is that he needs air, and he can't get any, and something inside his core is boiling._

_"Why won't he just_ die  _already? Wasn't the knife supposed to work?"_

_And he's burning, like his skin is made of hot coals and his blood is magna waiting to erupt..._

* * *

 "Jean!" 

* * *

 Jean bolts upright, trembling and sweating and gasping for breath as the last traces of his dream cling to him like the sticky filaments of a spider web. 

It takes him a moment to remember where he is. The dirt beneath him is soft, much softer than the stone floor of his old cell. The smell of earth fills his nostrils, warm and rich and...

And something smells bitter.

Belatedly, he realizes that the smell is of something burning, and when he glances down at his shirt--no, not his shirt, it's Eren's--there are tiny tendrils of smoke curling up from the off-white fabric. 

"J-Jean? Are you okay?" 

It's Marco, who's staring at him with brown eyes as round as dinner plates. Jean notes the way he's cradling his arms to his chest, and his heart drops into his stomach.

"Marco," he rasps. He winces a little; his throat feels impossibly raw. "What--"

"You were dreaming, Jean." There's music to his voice, soft and sweet, even though he looks horrified. 

Jean rakes a hand through his hair and draws in a shuddering breath. He needs to calm down. It was just a dream, it wasn't real, he's awake now...

...and he might have burned Marco while he was asleep. 

"Marco, I'm sorry," he blurts out. "Are you--"

"I'm fine," Marco cuts him off. Bullshit. Jean connects the dots; Marco must've tried to rouse him by shaking him, and Jean had probably burned him. 

"Let me see your hands," he demands, and Marco hesitantly complies. 

Marco has rough, calloused hands--the kind used to hard work and harsh weather. Jean inspects his palms carefully; they're a bit red, but there doesn't appear to be any blistering. 

"Is there a creek or something nearby?" Jean asks. "You need to rinse your hands in cold water..."

Marco shakes his head. "I'm okay." He pauses. "Jean, what was that?"

Um. 

 _That_ was what had changed his life for worse, the past few years, ever since... whatever it was started to manifest. 

"Would you believe me if I told you that I'm just hot-blooded?" he tries. 

Marco raises an eyebrow. 

"You know," Marco says softly, and something in his voice tugs at Jean's core, "I could just talk the truth out of you."

"True," he agrees, "but you probably wouldn't get any helpful information out of me."

"And why's that?"

"Because I don't know what it is, either." Jean tugs at a stray lock of hair hanging in his eyes; his hair is a shaggy mop. He tries to remember the last time he had gotten it cut. That had probably been a good few months ago, when it had started to reach his shoulders. 

Marco starts to say something, then closes his mouth and chews on his lip. 

"You know," Jean says after a moment, "I don't think I've properly thanked you, yet. So thanks." 

Marco shakes his head. "There's nothing to thank me for." 

"Are you kidding? You're... Dragging me out of those woods was the nicest thing anyone has done for me in a long time." Jean clamps his mouth shut, horrified by the awkward words that have just escaped his mouth. 

Marco looks stricken. 

"Uh... Sorry." Jean really hasn't spoken to anyone in a long, long while. Hopefully he hasn't just weirded Marco out--or, spirits forbid, made it seem like he's searching for pity. 

 "Jean..." 

"Let's not talk about that," he says in a hasty attempt to change the subject. 

"Let's not talk about what?" 

It's Eren, back from... wherever he'd gone while Jean was asleep. Jean wonders how long he'd been napping--should he apologize for making Marco wait for him? Marco didn't have to watch over him...

...although it was probably good that he had, or else Jean might have burned down the whole forest if he hadn't been woken up. 

"We're not talking about Jean's mysterious past, apparently," Marco says lightly. Eren raises an eyebrow, eyes sparkling with mischief. Jean notices their color for the first time; Eren's left eye is a vibrant green, and his right is a warm gold. He wonders if Eren had been born that way, or if it had something to do with his magic. Either way, the mismatched colors were striking.

"Really? Darn. I  _love_ mysterious pasts." Eren snorts. He squats down next to Marco. "So, what's the plan now?"

"Well..." Marco drawls, "I  _was_ thinking of going to town. The kitchen's in need of a grocery run." 

At the mention of groceries, Jean's stomach rumbles embarrassingly loudly. Both Eren and Marco turn to stare at him. Jean flushes.

"Sorry." 

Eren bursts out laughing, while Marco frowns apologetically. 

"We need to get Jean something to eat."

"Yeah, probably," Eren agrees. "Think you can climb up, now? Or do I need to bring the food down?"

There's a slight edge in the way Eren says it. Like it's a challenge. Jean grits his teeth and rises to his feet, ignoring the twinge in his ribs as he does so. His cuts feel raw, as though the dream had re-opened the wounds, but a quick look at the bandages shows him that that isn't the case. The sting is probably just from whatever herbal ointment Armin had poured into the wounds.

"Don't strain yourself," Marco cautions. Jean shakes his head.

"I'm fine." 

Eren whistles. "Those are some pretty bruises." 

Jean's hand goes to his throat automatically, feeling the memory of the blond guy's grip around his windpipe. 

"Yeah, well," he says, "I'm glad it was bruises and nothing else. Now, how do I get up there?" 

Eren points at the rope ladder dangling down from the sky. "Try that." 

* * *

Jean has never climbed a rope ladder before. Also, it's been a long time since he last did any exercise, and as a result he's pretty sure what little muscle tone he used to have has completely wasted away. 

"You can do it!" Eren shouts from below, and Jean isn't sure whether he genuinely means it or he's being a sarcastic asshole. 

Either way, it doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is, Jean really  _can't_ do it. He's about five rungs up from the ground, and already his arms are shaking from the exertion. 

 _This is pathetic_ , he thinks.  _I'm pathetic._

Well, his half-sister had been right on that count: he was far too weak to do  _anything_ , let alone rule a kingdom. 

He grips the rung with all his (limited) might as he tries to bring his feet up another rung. The whole ladder sways, and Jean feels a rush of panic go through him; what if he falls? Granted, he's only a few feet up, but if he goes any higher...

"Just don't look down!" Eren adds, and Jean determinedly stares forward. He refuses to glance down, knowing that it'll only make him more nervous. 

He ventures up a few more feet. Slowly. He feels as though his arms are melting.  _How much further..?_

Jean spares a moment to glance upward. He still has a long, long way to go. 

The emptiness in his stomach spurs him onward. Step by step, rung by rung, he'll get there. 

* * *

When he makes it to the top at last, his palms are sweaty and gross and his arms are twitching and he can hear his heartbeat thumping away. But he's made it at last. He flops down on the wooden planks, feeling boneless and breathless--entirely like a fish out of water. 

He's almost insulted by the easy grace with which Eren and Marco make their way up, but he supposes that it comes from practice. This  _is_ their home, after all. 

"You made it," Eren says by way of congratulations. 

"You don't have to sound so surprised," Jean huffs, pushing himself up into a kneeling position. 

Eren cracks a smile at that. A real one, not a taunting one. 

Marco ruffles his hair gently. Jean blinks, surprised by the parental gesture. "We never doubted you."

Jean raises an eyebrow.

"Well, Eren probably doubted you," he amends. "But I knew you could do it." And when Marco smiles, a warmth spreads through Jean's chest. 

 _He has a nice smile_. 

"So, food?" Jean asks, sitting back on his haunches. 

"Kitchen's this way," Eren calls. "If you can keep up, that is." And with that, he darts away, quick as a flash. Marco just sighs and shakes his head. 

"You don't have to race him--"

Jean gets to his feet and ignores the rush of vertigo.

And then, because he's an idiot, he runs after Eren with what little energy he has left, Marco yelling after him that he shouldn't be exerting himself too much. 

* * *

 Jean arrives at the kitchen with aching ribs and burning lungs, but it's a good kind of burn. The kind that comes with rising spirits and sore muscles and the promise of getting stronger. Jean had used to like to run, once upon a time, but it had been a long while since he'd last had the freedom to do so. 

"I win," Eren crows, having beaten him by quite some distance.

Jean glares at him. "You got a head start." 

"Still." Eren grins, and this time it's his shit-eating grin, not the real one. "I'm first, you're second." His gaze flits over Jean's shoulder as Marco approaches. "And Marco's third!" 

"Hey, I wasn't racing," Marco protests. 

"Doesn't matter, Freckles. You lost, fair and square." 

"What's all this ruckus out here? Eren, didn't you just eat?" A girl sticks her head out through the doorway. She's got reddish-brown hair pulled out of her face in a ponytail, and bright, inquisitive eyes that remind Jean of a chipmunk's. Her gaze settles on Jean; he quickly drops his eyes to the floor. Eye contact. He can't do eye contact. Not with a stranger. 

"Hey, Sasha. This is Jean," Eren says. 

"Nice to meet you, String Bean," Sasha says, and Jean forces himself to look up. There's not an ounce of malice in her expression, which helps put him at ease a little. 

 _Say hello back, Jean. Come on. It's not that hard. She won't bite you. One word._ He swallows. "String Bean?" is what comes out instead. 

 _Ugh, damn it. You can't even say 'hi' like a normal person_. 

"Since you're so skinny and all," Sasha explains, eyes glinting with amusement. 

"Oh," is all he can think to say in response. 

"Which reminds me," Marco says, "we ought to fatten him up, don't you think?"

His eyes widen in alarm as the memory of some old fairytale (two kids lost in the woods who stumble across a cottage made of candy) springs into his mind, but then he realizes that they're not planning on eating him. Probably. They're thieves, not cannibals. He thinks.

"You've come to the right place, then," Sasha agrees. She turns to Jean. "So, what'll it be?"

"Uh... anything. Please," he adds as an afterthought.

"Got it. One 'anything,' coming right up!"

He isn't sure if that's sarcasm, but she ducks back into the kitchen and yells something at whoever else is in there, and Jean really doesn't care what they give him, so long as it's edible. Either way, whatever they're making in the kitchen smells delicious. His mouth waters.

"Ew, he's drooling," Eren points out.

Jean swipes a hand roughly at his mouth and finds, much to his dismay, that he is in fact drooling a little. A little. Just a little, though. 

"Eren, be nice," Marco scolds. 

"But Marco, I  _am_ nice," Eren all but purrs, and Jean blinks as Marco turns as pink as the queen's favorite roses.

_What--? Oh. Oh, so that's what it is._

"N-not right now you aren't!" 

Sasha returns with a steaming hot bowl on a tray, and Jean stops paying attention to Marco's flustered demeanor and Eren's smug little smirk. "Stew," she proclaims, holding the tray out to Jean. "Hearty, but still easily digestible--careful, it's hot!"

Jean could care less about getting burned, but he takes it with as much care as he can muster. "Thank you." It smells  _divine_ \--he peers into the bowl's contents. It looks like there's a few pieces of beef in there, and maybe some root vegetables like carrots and potatoes, and--

He looks up at Sasha, who's grinning mischievously.

"String beans?" Jean says, raising an eyebrow.

"Hey, I didn't do it on purpose," she replies. "We already had them, so..."

Jean decides that he likes Sasha. A tiny smile tugs at his lips. "Thanks." 

"Go on, eat," she urges, and he doesn't have to be told twice.

The spoon is wooden, Jean notes in the back of his mind with relief, and the taste of warm, rich stew on his tongue eases some of the shaky feeling in his muscles. Bit by bit, spoonful by spoonful, he can feel the energy trickling into his body. 

"So, what's your name again?" Sasha asks. She glances at Eren and Marco before her gaze flits back to him.

Jean swallows and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Jean."

"Really? That’s an unusual name,” Sasha muses. “Where are you from?”

“Sina.”

Her eyebrows rocket skyward. “No kidding? The capital? Isn’t that kind of far?”

Jean hesitates, realizing that he actually has no idea where the hell he is. He tries to remember what he’s heard about the Thieves’ Forest. It’s somewhere near Stohess, right?

Wait, Maria?

Jean’s eyes widen at the realization. He’s never been this far south before.

Realizing that Sasha is still waiting for an answer, he says, “Yeah. I guess it kind of is.”

“You know, I think Connie used to live in Sina,” she tells him. She rubs her chin pensively, as though stroking an imaginary beard. “Is your name common over there?”

“I—I don’t think so.”

“Then why does it sound so familiar?”

Oh, spirits.

He scoops up another spoonful of soup, trying to buy time so that he can come up with an acceptable explanation. She’s right, his name isn’t a common one, but he hopes that these thieves aren’t too familiar with the kingdom’s rulers.

Luckily, he’s saved from having to explain anything, because Marco exclaims, “Cut it out!” so vehemently  that everyone within earshot freezes in place.

Jean doesn’t know what the fuck it is with Marco and his voice, but he can’t disobey the command. He wants to move—really, he wants to swallow the stew in his mouth—but finds that he can’t.

Marco, who’s already red with embarrassment, flushes an even deeper shade of crimson when he notices the abrupt stillness.

“Sorry,” he says, and just like that, whatever spell he had cast is broken. “I, er, I didn’t mean to—”

“Eren,” Sasha says icily, and her tone reminds Jean of one of his father’s knights. “Were you bothering poor Marco?”

Jean hardly thinks that ‘poor Marco’ needs any help against Eren—seriously, what the heck is with this guy? Is he some sort of warlock or something?—but he watches, fascinated, as Eren shrinks away from Sasha’s accusing glare.

“Maybe,” Eren admits. His tone reminds Jean of that of a sulky child. Actually, his whole demeanor is petulant; he’s slouching and picking at the hem of his shirt to avoid looking at Sasha.

“It’s okay, Sasha,” Marco stammers, face still as red as a beet. “He was just teasing, is all.”

She hums. “Well, Eren, you’re going to have to outgrow that behavior at some point.”

“I know, I—”

“Because if that’s how you flirt, I doubt that Marco is very impressed.”

Both of them start to splutter.

“I wasn’t—”

“He’s not—”

Sasha winks at Jean, who isn’t quite sure what to make of this latest development—Marco looks like he’s going to spontaneously combust, and Eren is now a rather deep shade of red as well—but he smiles back uncertainly.

“They’re hopeless, aren’t they?” she sighs, and Jean doesn’t know what she wants him to say, but he has to say something, so—

“Definitely hopeless. The least hopeful out there. Yeah.”

Jean claps a hand over his own mouth, unable to process the stupidity that he’s just spouted. I really need to learn how to be less awkward.

Sasha laughs. Not a normal laugh, either, but a boisterous head-thrown-back, shoulders-shaking, clutching-your-sides kind of laugh. Jean feels his face heat up.

“Sorry, sorry. Damn,” he mutters.

She sighs, having finished her fit of laughter, and wipes the tears away from her eyes. “Oh, boy. You’re funny, String Bean.”

And with that, she whisks away. Jean isn’t sure which of the three of them has the reddest complexion, now. He stares at Marco and Eren awkwardly, not knowing what to do. Eren looks determinedly at an overhead branch. Marco’s eyes keep flitting back and forth between him and Jean.

“So,” Jean says, feeling like the silence is pressing in on him. He has to break it. “Are you two... a thing?”

“A thing?” Marco repeats. His voice comes out as a squeak. “What—what kind of thing?”

“Um...” Jean crosses his index finger and middle finger together, even though he’s pretty sure Marco knows what kind of thing he’s talking about. Marco covers his face with his hands.

"No, no, we're not a thing," Marco yelps at an octave Jean hadn't thought he could reach.

Eren just shrugs, mumbling something unintelligible under his breath.

"...Okay." Jean returns to his stew in an attempt to ignore the awkwardness. It doesn't work; the atmosphere is palpable around them, pressing in and suffocating them. 

"I, uh, I'm gonna go for a walk," Eren announces loudly. Too loudly to be casual. Marco doesn't reply, and neither does Jean. With that, the dark-haired boy leaves, and Jean is left alone with Marco.

"I hate life," Marco whimpers, burying his face in his hands.

Jean puts his bowl to his lips and tips it back, slurping up the remainder of his quickly cooling stew. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What nerds.
> 
> As always, I'm on Tumblr if you wanna talk! :) 
> 
> Thanks for reading--feedback is always greatly appreciated! I have no idea how to do pacing, so critique on that would be awesome. ~~helpmeidunnowhati'mdoing~~


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I didn't know what the fuck was going on," Jean hisses. "And you know what? I still don't know what the fuck is going on!"
> 
> "It's very simple," Annie answers him dryly. "Marco and Eren are both idiots."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick update because I needed to get this out of my head. I've got business things to do after this (unfortunately). 
> 
> Again, feedback is greatly appreciated, because I have no idea how to do pacing.

“Any idea where he’s going?” Jean asks.

Marco just shrugs. The blush has mostly faded from his face, but he looks like he’s thinking hard about something.

“I think I’ll leave for town now,” he says after a moment. Jean marvels at how he doesn’t seem to have any fear of going into a public place; shouldn’t a thief be concerned about being recognized? “Do you think you’ll be okay over here?”

Well, he’ll have Sasha, at least. But the idea of meeting anyone else new starts a knot of tension in the pit of his stomach. Rationally, he knows that he shouldn’t be afraid of strangers—if they’re all like Sasha and Marco and Armin, then the other occupants of the Thieves’ Forest can’t be all that bad.

But he’s met a lot of new people in one day—Jean is pretty sure that this is a new record, more than any amount of people he’s ever had to meet at once during his short lifetime—and he isn’t sure that he can handle any more.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, and he’s proud to find that his voice doesn’t falter.

Marco gives him a small smile. A memory bubbles to the forefront of his consciousness—his mother’s smile, soft and tentative, but reassuring all the same. “Of course you will.”

“But how far is town?” Jean asks. He glances skyward; it’s hard to tell where the sun is through the ceiling of interlaced branches, but the cerulean of the sky is still clearly visible. Jean would estimate that it’s early afternoon.

“Not too far,” Marco answers. “I could probably make it on foot before sundown.”

“But then... after that? You’re not going to travel back here at night, right?” Jean notes the slight bags under Marco’s eyes and feels a slight pang of guilt, realizing that he hasn’t slept in at least a day.

“I’m sure I’ll be able to find lodging of some sort.”

Jean hesitates. “You’ll be going with Eren, right?”

“I don’t think so. He’s on his walk. I’ll take Mikasa with me.”

Ah, so Marco wants to avoid Eren. That, or the thieves really do need groceries urgently, but Jean suspects that it’s the former.

“...Who’s Mikasa?”

“You haven’t met her yet?” Marco sounds surprised. “Oh, right. Sorry. She’s one of my partners-in-crime.” There’s a fond kind of warmth that seeps into his voice when he talks about this Mikasa. She must be a good person, if Marco thinks highly of her. Marco chuckles. “She’s saved my life—and Eren’s—more times than I can count.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that you’d ever need saving,” Jean remarks. Marco certainly looks like he can handle himself—he’s tall (taller than Jean, at least), and built strong, and what with his broad back and shoulders people would probably think twice about crossing Marco.

“You’d be surprised.” Marco chews his lower lip. “In any case, I’m sure Eren will be back soon. Feel free to explore—the people here are pretty friendly. If anyone asks, tell them that I brought you here. They shouldn’t give you any trouble.”

“Where’s Armin?” Jean asks.

“Armin? Oh, he’s probably in his room, with all the books.”

Books.

Jean wouldn’t have thought that they would have books out here in a forest full of criminals, but then again, they are thieves. Jean wouldn’t be surprised if their books were stolen.

Although he couldn’t exactly blame them, if they had stolen books; such things were rare to find, since paper was such an expensive commodity, and copying books was such a time-consuming task. As a result, Jean had never seen any commoners with books in their possession, though the castle had a library with shelves full of nothing but the leather-bound things.

“Books sound good,” Jean mumbles.

Marco blinks in surprise. “You can read?”

“Um... a little.” That’s a lie, but for some reason, Jean doesn’t want Marco to be alienated by the fact that Jean is, in fact, literate. He’s forgotten that outside of the wealthy capital, there isn’t much need to learn how to read.

“Wow.” Marco looks utterly amazed. “You should ask to borrow something from Armin, then. He’d love to have someone to talk about his books with!”

“He doesn’t have anyone to discuss with?”

“Afraid not,” Marco says with a lighthearted shrug, but there’s a flicker in his eyes that doesn’t quite match his breezy tone. “I’ve got to go find Mikasa,” he says apologetically. “Sorry, but Sasha really needs some flour.”

“O-oh, okay.”

And with that, Marco dashes away across one of the wobbly-looking rope bridges, quick as a hare.

Jean looks around, feeling completely lost without Marco.

Damn. He’d forgotten to ask where Armin’s room even is.  

Well, he’s got time, if nothing else.

* * *

Jean gets his fair share of odd looks as he wanders around the thieves’ village in the trees. But they mind their own business, hanging wet clothes outside of wooden huts and telling jokes and laughing. Walking still tires him out, and he has to pause every so often to catch his breath, but having something in his stomach has done wonders for him overall. He feels less like a shadow and more like an actual human being. 

And being around other people is nice, even at a distance. Everything is so bright and warm and colorful here, in comparison to the dank darkness of the cell walls.

He takes in a deep breath, relishing the fresh air that enters his lungs. It tastes like the forest, earthy and crisp.  

This is... this is nice.

“Hey,” a girl’s voice calls out, and Jean flinches reflexively.

He turns around. “...Yes?”

She’s a tiny little thing, about a head and a half shorter than Jean, but something in her stance sends out the message that she should not be messed with. She has blond hair, tied back loosely, and cool blue eyes that remind Jean of the winter sky.

“Are you lost or something?”

“You could say that.”

The girl pauses, weighing her words, before saying, “You’re that kid that Marco dragged back, aren’t you.”

There’s no warmth in her voice at all—none. Her gaze is detached, as though she’s above her surroundings; Jean is reminded of steel blades and harsh whispers in that stupid old alley. A shiver crawls down his spine.

“I guess so,” he says. He tries to force himself to meet her stare, but he can’t. He studies his shoes. Wow, he really does need to clean the things.

“I’m Annie.”

Jean blinks. He glances up to find that those icy eyes seem to have thawed out a fraction. Annie isn’t smiling, really, but there’s a slight crinkle at the corners of her eyes, and it seems to Jean that for all her hard edges, there is kindness in her core.

“Hi, I’m Jean,” he replies, extending a hand to shake. She glances down at his outstretched hand, seemingly perplexed, and he withdraws it.

“Did Marco just leave you on your own?”

“He said he had to find Mikasa and go to town.”  
Annie nods. “Grocery run.” Her eyebrows furrow slightly. “But that’s not like him, to just up and leave.”

Jean shrugs.

“Has he shown you around?”

“Um... well, he showed me the kitchen,” he says. “A-and I’ve been wandering around here for a bit.”

Annie’s frown deepens. “That’s very unlike him.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jean confesses.

“Mmm. No, you wouldn’t.”

It’s a very matter-of-fact statement, but there’s a pang in Jean’s chest at that.

Annie turns, about to leave, but Jean says, “Wait. Please.”

She arches an eyebrow.

“Could you... could you take me to Armin?” He rubs at the back of his neck sheepishly. “I really have no idea where I’m going.”

“Funny. That was where I was just headed,” she responds. She starts to walk away, and Jean wonders if that’s a yes, but then she turns and says over her shoulder, “Come on.”

He scurries after her like a duckling following its mother.

* * *

 Armin’s shelter is small, but has more windows (with actual glass panes, Jean notices) than any of the other shelters that they’ve passed.

The initials “A.A.” are carved into the jaggedly cut wooden door in flowing script; clearly, whoever had done the engraving had done so with a lot of care.    

Annie raps on the door twice and waits.

“Come in!” comes the muffled reply, and Annie pushes the door open.

The interior of the shelter is well-lit, thanks to the numerous windows. The sunlight streaming in illuminates dust motes drifting aimlessly through the air. The room isn’t messy, exactly, but it certainly is cluttered. Armin’s bedding is rumpled in the corner; there are scraps of paper tacked up on the walls, covered in hastily scrawled notes and rough sketches; Jean is pretty sure that those are black blobs on the floor planks are ink stains—Armin must have spilled some. There are jars full of dried plants near the door, and Jean spies his bag full of medical supplies in the far corner, next to his sleeping place.  

“Hi,” Annie says, crossing over to where Armin is sitting cross-legged on the floor. There’s a rather thick tome open in his lap. Jean hovers uncertainly by the door.

“Jean!” Armin says. He smiles brightly. “How are you?”

“Er. I’m good. Mending and all that,” he replies, taking that as permission to enter. He pulls the door shut behind him. “What are you reading?”

Armin holds up the book as his answer. The pages are yellowed, and the leather binding is a bit torn in some places, but the gold-painted words on the cover are still clearly visible, even if they’re slightly faded in some places.

“‘ _Alchemical Principles_ ,’” Jean reads aloud.

“You can read!” Armin says, surprised. Armin’s eyes light up when he’s excited, Jean notices, and he feels a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. His enthusiasm is endearing.

“Yeah,” he says. Then, “You’re studying alchemy?”  

Armin waves a hand vaguely. “A little. I’m studying a lot of things, really.”

It’s then that Jean notices the stacks and stacks of books piled against the wall. Some of them are no more than pamphlets. Others are as thick as a brick. There are scraps of fabric hanging out of the sides of some of them—bookmarks, Jean realizes.

“Wow,” he says, because what else is there to say? “You’ve got quite the collection.”

“He’s a dragon, and this is his hoard,” Annie interjects, and Armin goes a bit pink at that.

“I’m not hoarding them,” the blond says defensively, but he’s grinning, and Annie gives him a half-smile in return.

Jean glances over the titles of the other books, written on their spines. _Dragonology. Classical Mythology. Geology. Astrology. Guide to the Constellations. Herbal Remedies. Lexicon._

But there are other ones, too, ones that aren’t books for learning. Jean recognizes a few titles, ones that he’s read before: _The Siren’s Song, A Thousand Nights in the City, Oedipus Rex._

“I’ve read that one,” Jean says, pointing at _Oedipus Rex_. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

Armin laughs. “Well, it certainly was an interesting one.”

Jean shakes his head. “That king was stupid.”

“Who, Oedipus? I think he was just a victim of circumstance,” Armin says.

“No, Laius. Oedipus’ father.”

Armin looks at him curiously. “And why’s that?”

“Well, he was trying to thwart a prophecy, right?” Jean says. “But if he hadn’t tried to avoid his fate, it might not even have come to pass.”

Annie looks completely, utterly bored. “It was just a story, wasn’t it?”

Yes, it _was_ a story. But not _just_ a story.

It’s a story that, in some places, hits very close to home.

“Yeah,” Jean agrees. “A fucked up one.”

“What’s your favorite story?” Armin asks. His eyes are shining—Jean hasn’t seen anyone this happy in a long time.

Jean reaches over and traces a finger over the black leather spine of _The Siren’s Song_. “Probably this one.”

He’d loved this book, years ago, when he was a small child with an imagination as vast as the sky above. It was a love story—a bittersweet one—but Jean had cared much less about the gooey romance than the passages describing the setting.

Jean had never seen the sea before, but the author described the glittering blue-green waters with such detail that he could almost believe that he was there. _And as the sun slid below the horizon, the skies cooled and the flames of sunset subsided into purples and deep blues and blacks. The tide was lazy now; he waited with bated breath, wondering if she—she, with her face as pale as the moon—would return to the shore tonight._

“I like that one, too,” Armin says softly. They share a smile.

Annie clears her throat, and Armin turns to her.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “You wanted to work on a new charm, right?”

Annie nods.

At that moment, the door bursts open. The sudden motion rattles Armin’s jars; Armin squeaks, startled.

"Eren!" 

"Where's Marco?" Eren demands, holding one arm behind his back. His eyes dart around the room, then settle on Jean. "Where'd he run off to?"

"He said he was going to town with Mikasa," Jean says, trying (and failing) to not be intimidated by Eren's intensity. "Why?"

Eren groans. "Really?"

"What's that behind your back, Eren?" Armin asks, having recovered from his initial surprise.

"Bugger off," Eren says rather rudely. Annie bristles at that.

"Hey, Jaeger," she snaps. "Just because you're having problems with your boyfriend--"

"He's not my boyfriend," Eren corrects her, just as Armin starts, "Annie, no--"

Annie rolls her eyes. "Of course he's not." 

"What did you do this time, Eren?" Armin asks. 

" _I_ didn't do anything," he protests. " _Sasha_ just had to go and make things awkward--" 

"Because we're all sick of you two dancing around each other," Armin interrupts with an exasperated sigh. "Honestly, Eren."

Jean blinks.

"And _Jean_ over here wasn't helping," Eren adds, jabbing a finger accusingly in his general direction. Jean scowls. "He asked if we were 'a thing' and then Marco completely freaked out." 

"I didn't know what the fuck was going on," Jean hisses. "And you know what? I still don't know what the fuck is going on!"

"It's very simple," Annie answers him dryly. "Marco and Eren are both idiots."

"Annie," Armin chides gently, although he doesn't contradict her statement. He pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes for a moment before he addresses Eren, who is pretty much fuming at Annie's comment. "You really should go talk to him, Eren." 

Eren slumps in defeat. "But he left with Mikasa," he whines, and draws his hand out from behind his back to reveal a straggly bundle of wildflowers. "So what am I supposed to do with these  _now_?" 

Annie snorts.

"You picked him  _flowers_?" Armin says in disbelief. Then, "Wait, you were going to tell him  _now_?" 

Eren buries his face in his hands (no doubt getting dirt all over his face in the process, since those flowers don't look clean at all) and makes a noise that sounds a lot like _mmmrrrrrggggghhhh_. 

"I suck," he laments. "Armin, you have to _help meeeee_."

Armin lets out another heavy sigh, but closes his book. "Sorry, Annie."

"It's fine," she says, standing up. She glances at Eren with something akin to amusement. "He needs all the help that he can get." 

Armin scrutinizes him, calculating. "Eren, are you really serious this time? You're going to do it? For sure?" 

Jean, needless to say, is confused by these latest developments. Armin's demeanor has changed completely; just a few minutes ago, he'd been smiling about  _The Siren's Song_ with Jean, but now he's back to the businesslike, professional manner that he'd donned when he was treating Jean's injuries. 

"Well..." Eren shifts his weight from foot to  foot. He hangs his head. "...yeah." 

Armin grins. 

"S-should I leave?" Jean asks, looking at the door. 

"Oh, no," Armin says. "I need you to help, Jean." 

... _Uh-oh._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Eren is the King of Awkward, Armin sort of has a Master Plan, and Jean is the poor sap who's just been dragged into a terrible, terrible mess. 
> 
> (Comments fuel my life source, if you have the time! ^-^)
> 
> And as always, come talk to me on my [tumblr](http://www.paintdripps.tumblr.com) if you just wanna talk about these nerds. I'm always in the mood for headcanon jams.


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren shrugs. "Not much time to read," he says. "Unless you're Armin, of course, and then everyone in the guild comes to you for help when they need to know what something says. The rest of us have to go travel a lot. Work, you know."
> 
> "Thievery," Jean says, and Eren nods unabashedly.
> 
> "Yep. That'd be it."

How could you describe Marco Bodt?

Eren has known him for years, and the first word to come to mind has always been ‘home.’ That must’ve been what had drawn Eren and Mikasa and Armin to him, all those years ago, when they were just hungry little street rats looking to find someplace where they could feel safe and loved. Marco had only been a year older than them, and he carried himself as though he was constantly afraid of something, but something about him suggested a sort of quiet, kind strength.

Marco has always been prone to nostalgia, a thing that Eren has never really understood himself, but tries to respect anyway. It probably stems from Marco’s love for his childhood home—a home that was snatched from him by force. Eren had left his own home in Shiganshina and never looked back—there was nothing for him there, nothing but the faded memory of his mother and the raging outbursts of his lunatic father—but home to Eren has always been where his friends are, and so he has never felt out of place.

For the first few years, Eren had just been glad to have another ally. It was him and Armin and Mikasa and Marco against the world; they were a four-person team. Armin was their brain, Eren and Mikasa were their operators, and Marco was their charm. Even then, Marco had had a way with words, and it wasn’t until later on that Eren had discovered that the charm was Marco’s own particular brand of magic—the product of the blood currently flowing through his veins.

And then, about a year ago, things had changed.

Eren started noticing all the little details more, which was a statement in and of itself, considering that he rarely paid attention to detail. That was more of Mikasa’s and Armin’s specialty. He would catch himself counting Marco’s freckles, or making note of the new scrapes and bruises on his knees (Marco could be clumsy at times, especially since he’d hit a growth spurt), or watching the way his mouth moved when he talked rather than actually listening to what Marco was saying.

And sometimes Eren would find himself wondering if Marco ever noticed things about him the way that Eren did, but he’d brush those thoughts aside and try to quell the butterflies fluttering away inside his stomach.

Is it love? It’s certainly the only way Eren can think of to describe the sensation. Oftentimes, he swears, Marco’s smile makes his heart stop. And he finds himself choking on words that he knows he probably shouldn’t speak aloud, but wants to anyway: “Hey, I know I’m a gigantic loser, but I really really like you,” “Yeah, I actually am staring at you, because you look so damn good that it makes my chest hurt,” “How is it even humanly possible for you to be that cute?”

But the thing is, he has no idea whether Marco feels the same way.

Everyone else seems to think so, if the constant teasing says anything. But the way Marco acts is confusing. He blushes a lot, but Eren is never sure if that’s a good indication or a bad one. Or maybe it’s just his imagination, or a trick of the light, or the weather is warm. Other times, Eren will be sitting next to Marco—so close that their shoulders and legs are resting together—and Marco freezes up, but that could be either good or bad.

And other times—like today—Marco flat-out rejects any insinuation that he and Eren could be together.

That hurts.

Eren definitely wouldn’t mind being a thing with Marco. But if Marco doesn’t want to be a thing with him, then...

Well, Eren isn’t sure what he’d do, but anything has to be better than this past year of plucking daisy petals and asking them whether Marco likes him or not.

If Eren is going to be rejected, he wants a direct rejection, not one evoked by Sasha’s teasing or Jean’s unhelpful commentary.

“So what’s the plan, Armin?” he asks, folding his arms over his chest. His little bundle of wildflowers is still clenched tightly in his hand. Poor things must be wilting by now. “Remember, I’m trusting you.”

Armin smiles and pats him on the head reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan that will work for sure.”

In the background, Jean fidgets. Eren wonders what part Jean is going to play in Armin’s grand plan.

“Really?”

“Yes.” Armin pauses, possibly to build dramatic suspense. “When he comes back, you’re going to take him aside...”

“Uh-huh...”

“And then you’re going to tell him how you feel.”

“What.” Eren isn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t something as plain and simple as that. “No flowers? No fireworks? No magic—”

Armin shakes his head. “Y’see, Eren, Marco doesn’t like fuss. No bells and whistles.”

“I never said anything about bells and whistles!”

Armin sighs. “Figure of speech. What I mean is, you can’t have any props to hide behind. No spectacles. No flashy tricks. You just need  to talk to him, one-on-one, and try not to spook him.”

Eren groans. “But he freaked out when Jean asked just one question—”

“Exactly,” Armin says.

“So how am I supposed to not fuck up?”

“And that,” his old friend says, “is where Jean comes in. Jean, come over here.”

Jean scooches over hesitantly, as though waiting for a bomb to go off in his face.

“Eren, you’re going to pretend that Jean is Marco.”

“What.”

They say it at the same time, although Eren manages to control his shock reasonably well. Jean squeaks it out at an octave that Eren hadn’t known he could reach.

Eren scowls. “Why can’t you be Marco?”

“Because it would be awkward,” Armin explains matter-of-factly.

“It’s going to be awkward this way, too!” Jean looks flustered.

“For you, yes. But not for me.” Armin grins.  

Well, he has a point there.

Jean mutters something about a ‘devil in disguise’ under his breath, and Armin’s grin only stretches wider.

“So, what? You just want me to practice confessing to Jean?”

“Basically.” Armin sits back down on the floor. “I’ll be coaching from a safe distance.”

This... this was not what Eren had wanted when he had been seeking help from his childhood friend. This was not what he had wanted at all.

He’d wanted help memorizing some sort of romantic poetry from one of Armin’s books, or maybe a good luck charm that would help him sweep Marco off his feet. Instead, here he is.

On the bright side, at least Jean doesn’t look at all comfortable with this idea either.

Eren forces himself to uncross his arms and look Jean in the eyes. Jean’s pale face is flushed pink, and he is very pointedly not looking at Eren.

“Um, hi, Marco,” Eren tries. He holds out his wilted bouquet. “I got you flowers.”

“I don’t want your shitty flowers,” Jean says, glancing at him through the corner of his eye.

Armin coughs squeakily, and Eren could swear that he’s trying to hide his laughter.

Eren scowls fiercely. “You’re a shitty Marco, Jean.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s because I’m not Marco.”

No, he certainly is not Marco. He is as starkly different from the freckled boy as one can possibly be. Where Marco is strong and dark-complexioned and gentle, Jean is fragile and sickly pale and brittle.

But still, Eren draws in a deep breath and tries to pretend that those glaring amber eyes are soft brown ones, and starts over.

“Hey,” he says, as gently as he can manage. “Look at me.”

Jean refuses to.

Eren reaches out and cups his chin, and Jean flinches. “What the fuck, Eren!”

“Jean, just go with it,” Armin calls out. Eren can see him out of the corner of his eye; he looks entirely too amused, in Eren’s opinion.

Jean stops resisting and finally looks at Eren. The intensity in his eyes is almost frightening, but Eren holds his stare.

“So, um...” Eren realizes that he has no idea what to say. Jean raises an eyebrow, waiting. “...hi?”

“Hi.”

Awkward silence.

“So, uh, I was... I was thinking about earlier,” Eren tries, “and I figured that I wouldn’t mind... being a thing with you. If you’ll have me, that is.”

There's a terrible, terrible beat of silence.

“Wow,” Jean says dryly. “That’s real fucking romantic. Consider me wooed.”

Eren can feel his face going red. “Hey, shut up!”

Armin interrupts. “Eren, you can’t just say that right off the bat. You’ve got to make some small talk first and get him comfortable. Otherwise you’ll probably spook him and then he’ll freeze up.”

It’s strange, discussing Marco like he’s some prey that Eren is trying to catch. But given how skittish he is about things like this, picturing Marco as a jittery deer isn’t such a stretch.

Jean is not Marco, however, and trying to practice staring into his eyes and spout something heartfelt just... it doesn’t feel right.

Eren tears his eyes away from Jean. “I... I think I’m done, actually.”

"Fine, but you can't back out," Armin says. "It's high time that you told him--"

"Yeah, I know."

"And if you're going to get him flowers," he adds after a moment's thought, "get him _nice_ flowers, at least."

Eren scowls. "These flowers are nice."

"Those are coriander flowers, Eren," Armin says, and Jean sputters at that.

"What? What's wrong with coriander?"

"That's pretty much the least romantic flower you could've picked," Armin says.

"Why? What's it mean?!" Eren rounds on Jean, who looks as though he's choking on laughter.

"Means you really, really want to... um..." Jean glances at Armin helplessly, but Armin just shakes his head. Jean coughs. "Yeah."     

Eren is completely lost.

Well, fine, then. He throws his tiny bouquet of coriander in Jean's face.

"Fine," he snaps. "Since these apparently have _such_ a terrible meaning, I'll give them to _you_."

Armin wheezes, and Jean screws up his face in disgust. "No thank you."

Eren storms out of Armin's room and almost crashes into Annie, who is apparently returning to visit.

Annie raises an eyebrow coolly. "I'm guessing it didn't go very well?"

"Shut up, Annie."

She smirks slightly at that, and is about to enter Armin's room, but Eren grabs her by the sleeve.

"Wait," he whispers. "What do coriander flowers mean?"

"Lust," Annie replies.

He stares at her in horror.

"You know," she says, taking his silence to mean he hadn't understood. "Means you really want to have sex with whoever you give them to--"

He buries his face in his hands. She walks into the room, and he hears Armin's delighted exclamation of "Annie! You're back!"

"So, the freezing charm," Annie says, and that's all that Eren catches before the door swings shut.

* * *

Life without Marco feels mundane, Eren realizes, as he sits outside Armin's room and listens to the leaves rustling above.

Eren doesn’t think he’s actually spent a day without Marco for at least a year, and that one time a year ago had only been because Marco had been very sick, and he’d been very insistent that Eren not visit him so as not to catch whatever disease he’d caught.

(It had worked, and Eren hadn’t gotten sick, but he had felt terrible for leaving his friend to suffer by himself for a whole week.)

But then comes the hard-hitting revelation that Marco will be away for a long time—until early tomorrow afternoon, at least—and Eren is forced to accept the fact that he will just have to deal with being without Marco for the day.

He heaves a dramatic groan, flopping facedown on the deck.

Armin’s door swings open, and for a moment Eren hopes that it’s Annie inviting him to work with her and Armin—yeah, that’s highly unlikely, but he _wishes_ —but then Jean steps out, looking embarrassed.

“Are you okay?” Jean asks.

Eren rolls over onto his back and squints up at him. “What?"

"You heard me," Jean says. There's a remaining coriander blossom in his hair, tiny and white. It sticks out like a beacon. Eren flushes at that and makes a flicking motion with his wrist, using his magic to blow it away.

"Armin figured you'd need help getting flowers," he continues.

Eren snorts. "More like he wanted to be alone with Annie."

Jean looks confused.

"They've got a thing going on," Eren explains. "Can't you see it? She likes to be alone with him a lot. Doesn't take too kindly to having other people with them."

Jean nods slowly.

"So, you and Marco," Jean says. "I'm still pretty lost, but... how long has that been a thing?"

"Ages."

"...ah."

Eren picks at the bandages on his hands. The skin on his palms is tingling; he takes it to mean that his magic is at work, repairing the burns. Speaking of repairing... "So how are you feeling?"

Jean hesitates. "Me?"

"No, the tree," Eren scoffs. "Yes, you."

"I'm okay." He sits down next to Eren cautiously; Eren notes the slight wince he makes as he moves. "Mostly just confused. It's been a long day."

"Guess you don't come back from the dead every day," Eren says.

Jean shakes his head. "Thankfully not."

Eren studies his face. Jean is still deathly pale--it'll take a few days of sun, but that can be remedied--but there's more of a lively glow to him than earlier this morning.

There's something about Jean, though. Something sizzling below the surface. Eren can't quite put his finger on it, but there's definitely something unique inside him.

"Are you a sorcerer?" Eren asks, tasting the air around them. He thinks he detects the faintest hint of smoke, but that could easily be from the kitchen.

"Me?"

"You've gotta stop asking stupid questions," Eren sighs. "Yeah, you."

Jean shakes his head. "Doubt it."

"Huh." Eren holds up his bandaged hands. "You've got some kind of magic, though, or else I wouldn't have gotten this bad a reaction."

Jean cringes. Then, "Wait, I burned you?"

Eren narrows his eyes. "How much do you remember of last night?"

"Uh..." Jean hesitates. He casts his eyes downward. "I remember waking up in the forest? And you and Marco were looking at me." He frowns, thinking. "Your hands were stuck to me, right?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck. I-- I'm sorry."

He _does_ sound sorry. Eren decides not to hold it against him. "'S okay. I heal fast." He unwinds the clean linen strips from around his hand, revealing his palms. The angry red burns and blisters are gone, replaced by new, pink skin. "See?"

Jean's eyes are wide.

"A thank you  _would_ be nice, though," Eren hums, "seeing as how I brought you back to life and all that."

Jean mutters a thank you, and Eren grins.

"Since Armin already sent you and all," he says, "do you wanna come with me to do some flower-hunting?"

Jean squints. "Do I really have a choice?" But he doesn't sound too upset. Sounds more like he's joking.

"No," Eren says.

"Then it'd be my pleasure."

* * *

Jean takes less time to descend the ladder than he did climbing up, Eren notices. He seems more at ease with his two feet planted in soil, rather than the wooden planks and platforms of the guild's mini-village.

"I don't know jack about flowers," Eren says, "'cept for the ones that are edible." He'd know the lacy white blossoms of carrots anywhere--they'd saved him from starving to death on several occasions. "How did you know about coriander?"

Jean shrugs. "I read a book once."

"You can read?" Eren almost shouts, and Jean flinches.

"Um. Yes?"

Eren looks him over again. Maybe the fair skin is the product of staying indoors. Jean  _does_ have a rather aristocratic nose. But then again, Jean is far too skinny to be one of the wealthy class; they're all well-fed, and none of them would ever be so thin that the skin on their face clings to the planes of the skull.

So Jean is educated, but he's not one of the elite. Eren knows what starvation looks like, and Jean wears hunger like a cloak over his shoulders.

"I can't," Eren says. "Never had the patience to learn."

"What about Marco?"

Eren thinks about that, remembers catching Marco with a book open in his lap once, eyebrows scrunched together in concentration, as he mouthed the words to himself at a stutteringly slow pace.    

"He tried," he answers. "Didn't get very far, though."

Marco had wanted to learn, hadn't he? Suddenly Eren wishes that he'd made more of an effort to support him. Armin was a good teacher, but Armin had always been busy, and, well, Marco probably would have needed more attention in order to figure it out.

"Why?"

Eren shrugs. "Not much time to read," he says. "Unless you're Armin, of course, and then everyone in the guild comes to you for help when they need to know what something says. The rest of us have to go travel a lot. Work, you know."

"Thievery," Jean says, and Eren nods unabashedly.

"Yep. That'd be it."

"Ever thought about going into another line of work?"

Eren barks a laugh. "If I'd had a choice about it, Jean, I would have." But being twelve years old and parentless and starving on the streets limits your options a little, and Eren had been forced into the profession at a very young age.

Jean hold his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Sorry. I was just wondering."

"So what kind of flowers should I be looking for, O Literate One?"

Jean thinks about it for a moment. "Well, I mean, red roses would be ideal, but..."

"I think I remember seeing a rose bush around here somewhere," Eren mumbles. "Come on."

* * *

Eren has always loved the forest at this time of year, when autumn has just begun to touch the trees. The forest floor is not yet littered with a carpet of crunchy dead leaves, but the colors are stunning. Green fades into yellow, with the occasional touch of auburn here and there; but once autumn has run its full course, the colors of the forest are all gone for the rest of the winter season.

Eren hates winter. Winter reminds him of Shiganshina, up north with its howling winds and bitter snowstorms.

Eren knows this forest like the back of his hand, though--he'd helped cast the charms that protect this place from the outside world--and it is his sanctuary.

He doesn't want to spend too much time wandering in search of a rose bush, though, so he closes his eyes, imagining one, and kneels.

He's aware of Jean's questioning stare burning into his back, but he ignores it in favor of concentrating.

The smell of Eren's magic fills the air, thick and heady. Eren sometimes wishes he could change the scent--maybe to something more badass, like the smell of snakeskin, or maybe blood, because how fucking awesome would that be?--but a sorcerer's signature is beyond their control, and so Eren is stuck smelling like a spice stand.

(Marco has said before that he likes the smell, though, so maybe it's not too bad.)

Eren reaches out blindly and touches the ground. He opens his eyes.

There, in front of them, is a trail of honey-colored mist hanging in the air.

Eren glances over his shoulder at Jean, whose mouth is hanging open.

"Come on," Eren says. "This'll lead us to the place we were looking for."

He follows the mist, checking every so often to make sure that Jean is following.

The trail takes him around clusters of trees and over fallen logs, and when the trail stops at last, Eren can hear the familiar gurgle of the stream nearby.

The rose bush grows all alone in the middle of a clearing. Eren is ecstatic to find that there are still a few late roses blooming. They're small, but the deep scarlet color is beautiful, and their fragrance spills out into the air, overpowering the smell of Eren's spice.

"I didn't know roses could be this fragrant," Jean comments, stepping beside him.

Eren turns to him, wondering if maybe they shouldn't be exerting Jean too much, but he looks okay. His forehead is glistening with a sheen of sweat, and he's slightly out of breath, but the exercise has put a bit of a rosy flush into Jean's cheeks.

Jean looks better when there's color in his face.

"Since we're by the stream, you could get a drink," Eren says. "Or, you know, take a bath."

Jean looks conflicted. "But Armin just dressed the cuts up a few hours ago--"

"When's the last time you bathed?"

Jean bites his lip.

"Trust me," Eren says, "you could do with a good washing up. Besides, it's still nice and warm out. The stream'll feel nice."

"Fine, you win," Jean says, smiling.

"Maybe I'll join you," Eren adds.

Jean squeaks at that, before Eren splutters out, "Not like _that!_ I just meant that I kind of need a bath, too--"

"Well, excuse me for assuming the worst," he says. "But you're the one who threw a bundle of coriander at me!"

Eren rolls his eyes, trying to play off his blush of mortification. "Well, come on. The stream's over this way a little."

They follow the sound of water until they come to the bank of the stream. It's not a very fast-moving stream, but it moves enough that the water is kept clear and clean. Eren pulls his shirt over his head and lays it on a nearby tree stump; he makes short work of his pants and shoes, too, and stands in just his braies.

Jean tugs his shirt off, too, revealing the mess of bandages and glistening ointments that adorn his torso. There's some blood staining a few of them; the others are stained slightly yellow, presumably from the herbal ointments.

Eren makes a face. "You should probably take them off. We can get you clean ones later."

"Uh... a little help?" Jean looks lost, tugging at the pin holding one of his dressings in place.

Eren sighs through his nose and ambles over. He unfastens the pins easily enough--he's had plenty of practice; Eren has had his fair share of injuries in the past--and reattaches them to Jean's shirt, which Jean holds up awkwardly.

As the bandages fall away, Eren expects to see barely scabbed-over gashes, and maybe some pus or fresh bleeding.

He sees none of that.

Instead, the wounds appear to have mostly closed up. They don't look nearly as deep as they had earlier--Eren's mouth falls agape.

"Eren?"

"Bullshit," Eren breathes out.

"...what?"

"You told me you weren't a sorcerer! That is complete bullshit. You're like me," Eren says, eyes wide.

"But I'm not!"

"Oh yeah?" Eren jabs Jean in the ribs experimentally. The other boy flinches, but doesn't cry out. "How's that feel, then?"

"Well, it hurt..."

"But not as much as this morning?" Eren presses.

"What are you even-- why--" Jean looks down for the first time, and his eyebrows shoot upward. "...what?"

"Maybe it's whatever Armin put on it--" Jean begins, but Eren shakes his head. 

"Armin's herbs are good, but not that good."

Jean's eyes meet Eren's. There's a sort of panicked light to them. 

"But I'm not--I don't--"

"Hey," Eren says, "I didn't figure it out until about two years ago. So it's entirely possible that you're like me."

"But I'm not," Jean insists, sounding almost hysterical. "I'm human, I'm normal, I'm--"

"I never said anything about not being human," Eren says, cutting him off there. 

"Look, please," Jean starts, but Eren doesn't let him finish. 

"Okay, we can drop it. For now." Eren pulls off the last bandage. Jean looks relieved. "I'm not helping you take your pants off. You can do that yourself."

Eren meanders over to the water's edge and dips his foot in. It's cold, but that's okay. The season isn't going to get any warmer, after all. 

Jean stands next to him, having stripped down to his undershorts. "How's the water?"

"Fine," Eren replies. 

Jean cautiously bends down to poke his finger into the current. "'Fine'? No, this is c--HEY!"

That last part is because Eren gives him a light shove, and Jean loses his balance and falls into the frigid water. 

Jean splutters. "You dick!" He stands up. The water only goes up to his bellybutton. He shoves at Eren, trying to splash him, but Eren just laughs and holds up his hand. Not a single drop reaches him.

"That's not fair," Jean growls, and Eren winks. 

"Whoever said I play fair?"

Jean grabs Eren's ankle and pulls, and Eren slides into the water, too.

The cold is a shock to his senses, but Eren gets Jean back by summoning a huge wave to splash him. 

Eren pushes all speculations about Jean and his possible magic out of his mind. 

He's got a splash fight to win. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Oh, and happy Independence Day, to any Americans reading this :)  
> Comments are greatly appreciated--especially about pacing, since I don't really know what I'm doing. (This is the longest fic I've ever attempted!) 
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://www.paintdripps.tumblr.com)! Come talk to me at any time, I love to meet new people :)


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No, it’s not about being impolite!” Marco nearly shouts, and Eren shuts up. “Eren, this is important!”
> 
> “Well, yeah, I’ve apparently misplaced an entire person—”
> 
> “No!”

The walk back with Jean is quiet.

Eren had dried the both of them off with a simple charm, and they had redressed quickly. Then he’d plucked a few roses for Marco—long-stemmed roses would have been better, Jean had said, but Eren had shrugged because what was he supposed to do? And besides, this way the rose was more flower than stem, and that was the important thing—and they’d gone on their merry way.

Well, not merry, exactly, since Jean had slipped into a pensive solemnity, but still.

“We’ll have to find you a place to sleep tonight,” Eren says, glancing over his shoulder at him.

That shakes Jean out of his silence. “I don’t care where I sleep.”

“You could sleep with me, I guess.”

Jean hesitates at that. Eren hopes that he isn’t still hung up on the coriander thing.

“My room is kind of messy, though, I’ll have to warn you,” Eren adds. His nose itches, but he can’t scratch it; his hands are full of roses. He briefly considers asking Jean to hold the flowers, but dismisses that idea. He turns his head to the side and tries to scratch his itch with his shoulder.

He fails miserably. Human beings, it turns out, are not flexible enough for that. Or, at least, Eren isn’t flexible enough for that.

“What are you doing?” Jean asks, sounding more bewildered than amused.

“M’ nose is itchy,” he mumbles.

“What, are you allergic to roses?”

Eren shrugs and gives up. He scrunches up his nose and tries to ignore the itch. “Maybe.” He jostles Jean with his elbow. “Or maybe I’m allergic to you.”

“That’s rude,” Jean remarks, but he’s smiling. Eren decides that Jean is an okay person, even if he is blatantly lying about not having magic in his blood. “Or maybe you’re allergic to being clean.”

“Hey!” Eren turns to him indignantly and opens his mouth to protest, but before he can come up with a well-worded retort, he sneezes an enormous sneeze.

Jean looks mortally offended at that. “Gross!”

“Not allergic to being clean,” Eren says happily. “Definitely allergic to you.”

“...I think I need another bath. I don’t want your stupid germs all over me.”

Eren just grins.

* * *

 

“Really, Jean, we need to ask Armin about this,” Eren says, dragging the other boy along by the arm. Having dropped the roses off at the kitchen—Sasha was all too thrilled to find a nice bowl of water for them, especially once Eren admitted what they were for—Eren has decided that regardless of whether Armin is busy with Annie or not, they need to have Jean’s rapidly healing wounds checked out.

“No, that’s okay—”

They reach Armin’s door. Eren doesn’t bother to knock, just pushes the door open and walks inside.

Immediately, the two blondes inside separate. Well, Armin separates from where he’d been sitting on the floor, head bent over a book, with Annie. He flies backward so quickly that it’s almost comical. Annie, on the other hand, doesn’t move an inch. She doesn’t even turn to acknowledge Eren’s entrance.

As Jean would say, “That’s rude.”

“E-Eren! Back already?” Armin says, his voice at a slightly higher pitch than normal.

It’s not even as though Eren had walked in on anything too intimate, so he doesn’t know why Armin’s acting so anxious, but he decides to get down to business.

“So apparently Jean heals fast,” Eren announces. Jean is dawdling in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest.

Armin’s posture goes from stiff to relaxed. “Really?”

“Yes, really. I think he’s like me.”

Annie turns around to face them. She fixes her gaze on Jean, frowning slightly. Or maybe that’s just her face. Whatever.

“He’s not a sorcerer,” Annie concludes, after Jean starts to squirm a little under her scrutiny. “Doesn’t smell like one.”

“But you said he heals fast?” Armin inquires.

Eren nods. “Jean, show them.”

“What am I supposed to do, just take off my shirt?!”

“Stars, don’t be such a prude,” Eren groans. “It’s for medical reasons.”

Jean looks highly uncomfortable with three pairs of eyes glued to him, but he does as told, pulling his borrowed shirt over his head. They hadn’t bothered to redo the bandages, so the pink outlines of the injuries on his torso are immediately visible.

Armin raises his eyebrows. “Well, good for Jean, I guess.”

Jean shifts. “So... uh... that’s your verdict?”

“Well, yeah,” Armin says. “You have some sort of healing factor, apparently. Good for you. What do you want me to say?”

“We were hoping you could help us figure out what the hell Jean is,” Eren says.

Annie shrugs. “I already told you, he isn’t a sorcerer like you or me.”

Eren turns to Armin. “Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t know, Eren,” Armin says exasperatedly. “But this is a good thing, isn’t it?”

Well, it’s not what Eren had been hoping for—he’d been hoping that Armin could break out one of his books and solve the mystery—but it doesn’t look like that will be happening any time soon.

Eren doesn’t miss the look of relief on Jean’s face.   

“Guess so,” Eren says. He glances between Armin and Annie again. “Well, um... have fun doing... whatever you two were doing before.”

“Thanks, we will,” Annie replies, her face utterly devoid of emotion.

Eren isn’t sure what Armin sees in her, but to each their own, he supposes. Maybe Armin likes her stability. If nothing else, Annie is unwavering in her solidity.

* * *

 

After a supper of roasted potatoes—Sasha insists that it’s all they have until Marco and Mikasa get back from town, but Eren suspects that really it’s just because Sasha likes potatoes—nightfall finds Eren and Jean standing awkwardly in Eren’s room.

Eren lays down a blanket that he’d stolen from Marco’s room—Marco has so many blankets, and besides, it’s not even like Marco will be sleeping there tonight—on the floor next to the bed and sprawls out on it.

“You get the bed,” he says, pointing at the straw-filled mattress. It’s a complete mess; Eren hadn’t bothered to make his bed that morning, and the blankets are all rumpled.

Jean shuffles awkwardly. “Uh... no, that’s okay, I could take the floor.”

Eren doesn’t budge. “Nuh-uh. Not if I have a say in the matter.” Marco would probably scold him if he found out that Eren had let a guest sleep on the floor. Mikasa would, too.

Jean timidly picks up one of Eren’s blankets. Eren notes the way he wrinkles his nose slightly.

“What, does my room stink or something?”   

Jean jumps. “Hmm? No, I—” He bites his lip. “I’m just... kind of nervous.”

“I told you,” Eren says, “I’m not coming on to you.”

“No, I know that,” Jean says defensively, crossing his arms. “I just... uh...” His eyes dart around the room. Eren can see his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “You’ve got an awful lot of flammable things here, don’t you?”   
“...you’re not an arsonist or something, are you?”

“Not intentionally!”

Eren’s palms tingle with the memory of being burned.

Seeing as how Jean is definitely not telling him something very important, and Eren actually likes not having his room burnt to a crisp, he decides that a scene change is in order.

“Okay,” he says. “We’ll sleep on the ground tonight.”

“...what?”

“You heard me. Outside. On the dirt. Does that make you feel safer?”

Eren doesn’t miss how Jean’s eyes brighten considerably.

“Yes,” he breathes, and the relief on his face almost makes Eren feel less irritated about the fact that he has just agreed to sleep in the dirt with Jean.

Almost.  

* * *

 

“I mean, it’s kind of like camping,” Eren says, more for his own benefit than Jean’s. Eren had had his fill of sleeping under the open skies long ago, but one more night won’t hurt.

Not that the skies are very open, here; you can barely catch a glimpse of the stars between the branches overhead.

“Thank you,” Jean says, and Eren is pretty sure that this thank-you is leagues more genuine than the one he had uttered before, to thank Eren for saving his life.

Well, whatever. Jean has different priorities, he supposes.

It’s a warm night, much to Eren’s relief, as the last days of summer always are. He spreads his blanket out on the ground and hopes that the little bits of peeled tree bark on the ground won’t stick to the blanket—those are always a pain to get out—even  though he knows that he’ll probably be picking pieces of wood out of the thing for days to come.

Jean doesn’t lay any blankets down or anything, except to fold one up and use it as a pillow. He settles himself in the dirt and curls up in a little ball on his side.

He looks tiny, like that. Even though Eren knows that Jean is definitely taller than him, he can’t help but feel bigger than him in this instant.

Eren wonders if he should say something—like “good night,” maybe, or tell a bedtime story?—but Jean seems pretty much settled.

He decides to say something anyway. “G’night, Jean.”

There’s a pause, but then Jean whispers back, “Night, Eren.”

Eren lies on his back and stares up at the sky. If he looks closely enough, he can see some of the stars scattered between the branches, like a dusting of snow in the ink-dark sky.

Or like freckles.

Eren turns over onto his side and tries not to think about tomorrow.

* * *

 

_“Hey, you! Street rat!”_

_The voice is a deep bass, and Eren knows he shouldn’t stop, shouldn’t acknowledge the shout—he is not a street rat—but he halts anyway, stopped by the authoritative tone in the voice._

_The roll is still hot, underneath his shirt, but the heat is welcome on this frigid winter day. It’s cold, the kind of cold that sinks deep into your bones and lingers there, and Eren knows that he’s being counted on to deliver this stolen piece of bread._

_Mikasa and Armin have been sick for days, and the fact that they haven’t eaten for so long probably isn’t helping them get better._

_He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses them. They’re all he has left in this world._

_Eren turns around._

_The baker is a stout man. He isn’t much taller than Eren, but he’s built much stronger than Eren is, and Eren highly doubts that he’ll be able to win in a fight._

_His best shot, he figures, is to run like hell and hope that the baker won’t be able to keep up, but Eren hasn’t eaten in days either and his legs are shaking with the cold._

_Now or never, do or die, Eren decides, and he makes a break for it._

_He doesn’t get very far. Running in the ice-covered streets with long since worn-out boots is no easy feat, and he only makes it a few meters before he skids on the slick surface and falls on his butt._

_He thinks his tailbone has been damaged by that fall—there’s pain radiating up his spine from the contact point—but he doesn’t have time to stand up, because the baker catches up to him and grabs him by the shirt collar._

_Eren crosses his arms over his stomach, holding the bread in place._

_“You can’t steal from me and get away from it, street rat,” the baker sneers, and Eren wants to shout that if he had enough money to pay for the food, he would, but he doesn’t, and his friends are probably dying—_

_He bites down on his tongue._

_So this is what failure tastes like—salty and metallic. Or maybe that’s just the taste of the blood welling up in his mouth._

_“I’m sorry,” Eren pleads, trying to turn on the waterworks. It’s not working; he’s not well-hydrated enough to muster any tears. “Please, just let me go—”_

_“I’ll let you go, all right,” the baker fumes. “After I finish beating what you owe me out of your worthless hide.”_

_In the back of his mind, Eren wonders whether everyone in this bitterly cold town—Rose, they call it, but that’s a name that’s far too beautiful for such an ugly, frosty city—is just as cruel, or if it’s just the baker._

_The baker tightens his grip on Eren’s collar, choking him. Eren braces himself for a beating, but refuses to flinch away and shut his eyes._

_A new voice rings out. “Leave him alone, please.”_

_It’s a boy’s voice, and in that moment Eren swears that he has never heard a sound more beautiful than this. He turns his head to the side to see a dark-haired  boy, probably around his age, standing in the street with his arms raised in a gesture of supplication._

_“And why would I do that?” The baker growls._

_“Because you want to,” the boy answers, and Eren feels his grip slackening. “You don’t really want to hurt this poor boy. You want to let him go.”_   
_“I...” His forehead creases in confusion._

_“Please,” the boy says. “Put him down. Let him go. He won’t bother you again; you’ve already scared him enough.”_

_Eren almost yells that he isn’t afraid of this stupid man, but something tells him to keep his mouth shut._

_The baker nods once, and then releases Eren. Eren stumbles backward and almost falls again, but manages to keep his balance._

_“You want to go back to your bakery now,” the boy continues. “Because it’s warm there. You have far more important things to do than beat this street rat.”_

_And without another word, the baker complies, shuffling away._

_Eren rubs his lower back, wincing. There’s most likely going to be a bruise there. The brunt of the pain, however, has been numbed by the cold. “Thank you. I owe you.”_

_The boy demures. “Ah, it’s nothing. I just... it wouldn’t have been right for me to just stand by...” He offers Eren a tentative smile. Eren returns it full-force. “What’s your name?”_

_“Eren,” he answers. “What’s yours?”_

_He hesitates before saying, “I’m Marco.”_

_Marco has freckles dusted across his cheeks and nose, Eren notices, with a few stray ones on his forehead and chin._

_“I’m guessing you’re not from around here,” Marco says. “Otherwise you’d have known not to cross the baker.”_

_“I’m not,” Eren replies._

_Marco’s eyes brighten with curiosity. “You’re not?”_

_Eren wonders if Marco is from here. But upon closer inspection—the boy is dressed only in a thin shirt, and there are holes in his pants, and a certain gauntness to the planes of his face, and blue-tinged lips—Eren realizes that Marco is probably a street rat, just like him._

_“No, I’m from the east,” he says. “Shiganshina.”_

_“Never heard of it,” Marco confesses. “Is that a big city?”_

_“Not at all. Are you from here?”_

_Marco shakes his head. “I’m from the southern coast. Jinae.”_

_“Ah.” The warmth of the bread is fading, and Eren remembers that he still has a job to do. But he still has to thank this stranger. “Do you... do you want a piece?” He tugs it out from underneath his shirt._

_Marco’s eyes light up with longing at the sight of the roll, but he shakes his head. “That’s okay.”_

_Eren bites his lip. “Do you have to get home soon? The weather’s bad out here.”_

_“... I don’t have a home,” Marco admits, and Eren makes a decision._

_“You do now,” he says, starting to walk away. Marco stares after him in confusion. “Come on. You can stay with me and my friends. At least we have someplace warm to sleep.”_

_Marco hesitates._

_“I promise I’m not a crazy murderer,” Eren says, stowing the bread back from where he’d drawn it out. “But you look like you’re cold. And I think I have an extra quilt.” He doesn’t, actually, but Marco can use his. He’ll just go looking for some more sticks for the fire and hope that they’re dry enough to burn._

_Marco follows him. “...okay.”_

* * *

 

“Eren!”

Eren snaps awake to find dark brown eyes staring into his own.

He almost screams, but then his mind catches up with his eyes and registers what he’s seeing, and...

Wow, Marco’s face is really close to his face.

Marco’s chuckle is warm and throaty. He backs up, giving Eren room to blink and sit up.

“Marco? You’re back already?”

“What do you mean, ‘already’?” Marco whispers, grinning. He points upward.

Eren looks up.

Oh.

The sky is the bright blue color of midday already. Marco must have just gotten back now, judging by the burlap sack lying in the dirt next to him.

“I really slept that long?” Eren yawns.

“Given that it’s almost lunchtime and you’re still here... apparently so.”

“Wait.” Eren starts. “Where’s Jean?”

Marco raises an eyebrow. “Jean? What does he—”

“He’s the one who got me to sleep out here,” Eren mutters, whipping his head back and forth, searching for the fair-skinned boy. He’s nowhere to be seen; his folded-up blanket is lying neatly on the ground where he’d been last night.

Marco grabs him by the shoulders. “Eren, what? Did you lose Jean?”

“I didn’t lose him,” Eren protests. “He’s gone and run off somewhere—where the devil could he have gone?”   

Marco’s eyes widen. “Eren, we can’t have lost Jean—”

“Yeah, I know, it’s impolite to lose a guest while you’re sleeping or some shit—”

“No, it’s not about being impolite!” Marco nearly shouts, and Eren shuts up. “Eren, this is important!”

“Well, yeah, I’ve apparently misplaced an entire person—”

“No!”

Marco turns to the side and starts digging through his sack, and comes up with a rolled-up piece of paper.

He unfurls the scroll, showing it to Eren with a panicked light in his eyes.

“Marco, you know I can’t read—” and then he stops.

Because painted on the scroll, beneath bold, black letters, is the likeness of none other than their mystery boy Jean.

“I think it’s a wanted poster,” Marco tells him. “Eren, what if Jean is dangerous? What if we’re harboring someone wanted by the government, we can’t—”

Eren could almost laugh at the irony—thieves afraid of harboring a criminal, imagine!—but Marco has a point. If Jean is someone dangerous—it seems far-fetched to picture him as a murderer, when just a couple days ago he was on death’s doorstep himself—but what if?

Or even worse—what if he was someone important, someone working for the government, and they’d just invited someone who could put them all in jail to their hideout?

Eren pushes thoughts of snow and roses out of his mind. 

“...Shit.”      

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!  
> At last, the plot thickens. Where has Jean gone? Who _is_ Jean? 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://www.paintdripps.tumblr.com) if you wanna come talk! I love meeting new people, don't be shy!


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hey, hey. Easy there." Eren pats him on the shoulder reassuringly. "That won't happen here. They won't raid our forest."  
> Marco draws in a deep breath.  
> The raids were what had driven him out of Jinae, all those years ago. They had razed the seaport town down to the ground—and all because the King on his great gilded throne in Sina had decided that he didn’t want his human subjects mingling with the other peoples that often traveled to the southern coast.  
> “I don’t want it to happen here,” Marco whispers, as memories of the royal guard with their polished muskets and steel swords drawn race through his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Turns out that I'm not dead--fancy that!   
> Sorry for the wait.

Marco really, really wishes that he could read.

But it's been a while since he last picked up a book, and the curling letters on the poster are a far cry from the simpler print that Armin had shown him when he first tried to learn, so he really has no idea what this poster says.

There are numbers written beneath the portrait. Marco knows that. Evidently there's quite a large sum of money being offered, he guesses.

"We need to find him," he says, unable to keep all the panic from seeping into his voice.

"Where's Mikasa?"

"Trying to bring the supplies up, no doubt—Eren, can’t you find him?" Mikasa might be better at tracking than Eren, but there’s something inside him screaming that they have to get to Jean now and that there’s no time to waste.

“I’m not sure...”

Marco grabs him by the shoulders, crumpling the poster a little bit in the process. He ignores it. “Yes, you can,” he says firmly, looking directly into Eren’s eyes. “I believe in you.”

Eren swallows. “Okay.”

Marco releases him, and Eren shuts his eyes tight, concentrating. The familiar spicy odor colors the air.

A trail of golden smoke appears in the air before them.

“This should lead us to him,” Eren says hesitantly. “Although I’m not sure how well it will work, given that I’ve never tried to track a person with this trick...”

“I’m sure it’ll go just fine.” He starts walking.

Eren lingers behind for a moment. “...Marco?”

“Yes?”

“Ah, never mind.”

They walk side by side, leaves crunching underfoot as they go.

* * *

 Eren’s magic trail takes them to the bank of the river, much to Marco’s surprise. His grip on the poster tightens.

“Trail ends here,” Eren says, his voice hushed. Then, louder, he calls out, “Jean?”

“Eren?”

Sure enough, it’s Jean. He stands up from where he’d been hunched near a cluster of boulders—he’d been so still that Marco hadn’t seen him right away—at the water’s edge. “Hey, Marco’s back!”

Jean smiles then—the biggest smile Marco has ever seen him wear, one that lights up his whole face—and Marco’s fears ease a little. He’d been acting ridiculous; how could Jean be dangerous enough to put the whole guild at risk? He’s just a half-starved boy, injured within an inch of his life.

Speaking of which...

“How are you healing up?” Marco asks, rolling the poster up tighter and holstering it in his belt. Now is not the time for accusations, he decides. Maybe later. But it would seem wrong to brandish this poster in his face in this instant.

“Um.” Jean pauses, and the smile fades from his face. He drops his gaze to the ground. “Very well, actually.”

“That’s great!” It’s a little strange that he looks so downcast about the fact that he’s mending, but before Marco can press the matter further, Eren asks him, “What were you doing out here?”

“I was feeling a little warm,” Jean says, and Marco notices for the first time the slight flush of pink in his face. “So I came here to rinse my face and cool off a little.” The collar of his shirt is wet, as is the front of his hair, but that’s still a bit odd. It might not be autumn quite yet, but it’s not a hot enough day to warrant a trip to the river.

“Are you feeling ill?”

Jean shakes his head. “I feel fine, honestly. Just a little hot.”

Marco frowns. “Come closer.”

Jean does as told, looking mildly confused, but then Marco places the back of his hand against Jean’s forehead to gauge his temperature.

Jean appears to be running a little warm, but then again, Eren’s body temperature runs warmer than usual, too, so Marco decides not to worry.

“I don’t think you have a fever,” he tells him.

“I already told you, I feel fine.” Jean looks between Marco and Eren briefly and then throws Eren a questioning look.

Eren shakes his head.

Marco turns to him, perplexed, but then Jean says, “I, um, I think I’ll head on up to the kitchen, if you don’t mind?”

“Uh—”

“I don’t think there’s food ready yet,” Eren says. Marco frowns. That’s ridiculous—it’s about noon, Connie and Sasha probably have something going on the stove, given that it’s lunchtime—but Jean raises an eyebrow.

“Will they be serving _chicken_?” His heavy emphasis on the word ‘chicken’ is obvious, but Marco is completely lost. He has no idea what they’re talking about.

“Shut up!” Eren snaps. “They need time, is all!”

Marco is very sure that Eren and Jean aren’t talking about Sasha and Connie or whoever else is in the kitchen at the moment. But the way Eren’s on edge makes him worry a little, and Jean did say that he wanted to go get some food, and Marco is hungry, too, so he says, “No, we could probably head up now.

* * *

 “So how are you not dead on your feet?” Eren asks him as they make the trek back to the village in the trees.

Marco grins. “Got a good night’s sleep last night.” He pauses, taking note of the slight buzzing sensation currently running through his system. “Also, coffee.” He’s never been super fond of coffee—Marco has always had an enormous sweet tooth, and doesn’t see much appeal in the bitter drink—but Mikasa had convinced him to down a cup earlier that morning, and the couple of sugar cubes that she’d added had made a world of difference.

Eren snorts. “Mikasa’s rubbing off on you.”

“That almost sounds dirty when you say it like that,” Jean chimes in. Marco is made aware of how Jean shuffles awkwardly behind them; the path here isn’t really wide enough for all three of them to walk side-by-side.

He frowns. “How is that—”

Eren chokes. “Stars above, that’s not what I meant!”

They reach the foot of one of the trees. Speak of the devil and the devil appears—Mikasa is there waiting for them with her arms crossed, a ladder dangling behind her. Not that Mikasa is a devil, of course. Although she can be, when she’s properly enraged.

Marco cringes, bracing himself for some sort of reproach for taking off and leaving her to haul the spoils from their grocery trip up by herself. “Mikasa, I’m sorry, I—”

She waves a hand dismissively. “I took care of hauling everything up already.” She raises an eyebrow. “Where’d you run off to?”

“Uh... remember that thing from yesterday?”

She nods. Her face gives nothing away, although he sees the click of realization in her eyes. “Yes?”

“I had to check something.”

“Ah.” She gives the tiniest of nods. She glances behind Eren and Marco to see Jean. “I don’t believe we’ve officially met?”

Jean looks petrified. “I, ah, no—”

Marco almost wants to laugh. The look in his eyes is something akin to a field mouse faced with a hawk. But that makes no sense; Mikasa doesn’t have her intimidating face on. She’s as relaxed as relaxed can be.

Unless...

Marco notes that the pink hue in Jean’s face seems to have intensified a bit, and he’s having trouble meeting her eyes. And then he understands.

Jean has no idea how to talk to pretty people, does he? Marco remembers being rendered momentarily mute when he’d first met Mikasa, even though he didn’t have a preference for girls. She’s just the kind of beautiful that you’d find in a statue—unwavering and distant and flawless, probably courtesy of that distant touch of elvish blood—and the worst part is that she knows it. Confidence in a pretty girl can be as deadly as monkshood on a dagger.    

Mikasa seems to have keyed in on Jean’s nervousness; there’s a mischievous glint in her coal-dark eyes.

“What’s your name?” she asks, fiddling with one end of her worn out scarlet scarf..    

He swallows. “I’m, uh—I’m Jean.”

Eren laughs. “Eloquent as always, Jean.” His tone sharpens. “Also, she’s my sister, so—”

Mikasa rolls her eyes. “Eren, relax. You don’t need to say that every time.”  

“Just in case.” Eren shoots a glance at Jean.

Marco stifles a chuckle. Eren’s overprotective brother mode never fails to entertain.

“Well, nice to meet you, Jean,” she says.

Jean blinks rapidly. “You too. I, um... your hair is really pretty.” And then he clamps a hand over his mouth, looking utterly mortified.

Eren scowls.

Mikasa just smiles and twiddles a lock between her fingertips. “Thank you. Well, I’ll be on my way. Sasha asked me to get some huckleberries.” She winks at Eren. “She told me about your surprise. Good luck.”

Eren scowls harder. “Wha—really?”

“And you—” she points at Marco. “Remember what I told you yesterday.”

Marco feels the heat rising to his cheeks, but he tries to squash it down. “Yes’m.”

* * *

He had thought yesterday that running over to Rose would help him escape his mortification, but that hadn’t been the case at all. Mikasa took it upon herself to protect Eren just as Eren protected her, and had given Marco a full lecture about her thoughts on the matter.

Marco had found himself wondering if that was what having a mother was like. If so, it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience, although he was prickling with discomfort for most of the afternoon.

“You have to tell him sometime, you know,” she’d said, smiling in that barely-there way of hers.

Marco choked on empty air. “Wh—not you, too!”

“It’s been brewing for a while,” she sighed. “What are you waiting for?”

Marco didn’t answer.

“You know that the chances of him turning you down are roughly zero.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. Marco wanted to believe her, he really did, but couldn’t quite bring himself to hope that maybe Eren wanted a little more than friendship, too.

“What if you’re wrong?”

Her reply was touched with poorly concealed amusement. “Do you think I’m wrong?”

No, he thought. He trusted Mikasa implicitly, and she of all people probably knew Eren’s inner workings. But he couldn’t shake the feeling of doubt that he’d grown accustomed to, ever since he’d first put a name to his attraction to Eren and subsequently began to talk himself out of hope.

He changed the subject to the spoils of their latest conquest, too—that gaudy baron’s shield.

“It’s creepy,” Marco said, and Mikasa nodded her agreement.

“I don’t like snakes much either,” she said. Mikasa had been bitten by a snake, once, when they were younger and hadn’t been as careful as they were now. Marco remembered that Eren had had to suck and spit the venom out of her ankle while Armin desperately tried to recall which plants could help with a snakebite. Snake venom didn’t agree with Mikasa; her whole ankle swelled up and turned green for days, even after Eren and Armin’s best efforts.

“They’re supposed to be good luck, though,” Marco mused. “I think I heard something once about snakes being guardians.”

“Maybe,” she acquiesced. “But I’ve also heard that they represent poison and revenge.”

“Fun. When do you think we’ll be able to get rid of it?”

She thought about it. “If we want to sell it nearby, not for another two months at least. But we could send it east to Joyeuse if we wanted to get rid of it fast. I think that would be far enough. The baron’s reach isn’t that wide.”

And then Marco had spotted a crowd gathered around a new poster in the town square, murmuring among themselves.

The thieves of the Thieves’ Forest had to check from time to time to make sure that no one had bounties on their heads, and so as was routine, Marco and Mikasa headed over to look.

“I hope that  Connie didn’t get spotted on his last run,” Marco whispered. Mikasa wound her scarf around her face, concealing most of it from view.

“I hope that it wasn’t you,” she whispered back, and a spark of anxiety lit up inside his stomach. What if someone had seen him stumbling around with Jean? He shook his head.

“No one else in their right mind would have been out at that time of night!”

Except for the mercenaries who had tried to dump Jean in the forest.

They threaded their way through the crowd, jostling quite a few townspeople.

Luckily for Marco,  he was tall enough to be able to look over the heads of other people and get a clear view.

He froze.

It wasn’t Connie, or him, or Eren, or anyone else.

It was Jean.

He wasn’t sure why or how, but there was no mistaking the two-toned hair and thin, drawn face.

Mikasa was standing on tiptoe, but that still wasn’t quite enough. “Who is it?”

Marco didn’t answer.

“Marco...?”

* * *

 “Marco? Hey, Marco.” It’s Jean’s voice. Marco blinks.

“Hmm?”

“Eren asked if you wanted to go up for lunch now,” Jean says. He looks concerned.

“Guess that coffee isn’t doing you much good anymore, is it?” Eren jokes.

“Huh? Oh, I guess not.” He rubs at the back of his neck sheepishly. The poster in his belt feels as though it’s burning through his clothes. He ignores it. “Let’s go.”

Marco takes the lead, climbing up the swinging rope ladder easily enough. There’s a small scuffle on the ground below him. He thinks he hears Jean whisper, “Pervert!” and then Eren snaps back, “Shut up!” rather defensively.

He twists around so that he can look at them, still keeping one hand on the rungs. “What’s going on?”

Jean is smirking. Eren’s cheeks have gone pink.

“Eren keeps looking at your—”

“Don’t listen to him!”

“—pants.”

“Yeah, they’re nice pants,” Eren agrees hurriedly.     

Marco decides that he doesn’t believe either of them. “Er, thanks,” he says awkwardly. “...I like your pants, too?”

Still, he makes a mental note to check and see if there’s some sort of hole on his backside or something. He hopes not.

* * *

 “Marco!” Sasha all but flies at him and envelops him in a crushing hug. He wheezes. “Thank you so much! Chocolate! You shouldn’t have!”

“It’s nothing,” he chokes out. She releases him. He has to take in a deep breath to re-inflate his poor lungs. “You and Connie work hard.”

Chocolate candy is definitely on the pricier side, but Marco and Mikasa had decided that the baron’s shield would probably fetch a decent enough price, so they felt it would be okay to splurge a bit and buy a little something for the tireless chefs.

“You got them chocolate?” Eren asks. He nudges Marco with his elbow. “Did you get any for me?”

“No chocolate for you, sorry,” Marco says. He doesn’t even have to look to know that Eren is pouting. “But we did get you something.”

Eren’s eyes brighten right up. “Really?”

“Really.”

Jean stands awkwardly to the side. He’s a bit out of breath from their climb, but he doesn’t seem too wiped out. Jean sniffs the air. “Do I smell... bread?”

Connie wipes his hands, sending up a white cloud of flour in the air. “Just went in the oven, String Bean.” He grins. “By the way, catch!” He tosses something over.

“Wh—ow!” The green projectile hits Jean squarely in the forehead and falls to the floor. Jean scowls. “Do I even need to check?”

Marco bends down to pick it up. Sure enough, it’s a string bean. He hands it over to Jean, who examines it distastefully.

“Hardy-har-har.”

Sasha laughs. “Isn’t Connie hilarious?”

“Very hilarious,” Marco agrees mildly. He twists around to check his pants for holes, since no one seems to be paying much attention to him at the moment. No holes. He wonders what Eren had been gawking at.

“Gotta work on your reaction time there a little bit, String Bean,” Connie says. “You didn’t even put your hands up! Just let it hit you in the face.”

“No, he totally caught it,” Eren argues.

“How do you mean?”

“He’s a string bean, he doesn’t have hands. He caught it the only way he knows how!”

“Gee, you’re right.”

Jean looks like he wants to disappear. Marco steps in. “Okay, that’s enough.”

Eren meanders over to the other side of the kitchen. “I got you something, by the way.”

“It’s not a gigantic spider or something, is it?” Marco jokes.

“Would I give you something like that?” Eren asks, pausing.  His eyes are dead serious.

Marco swallows dryly. “I suppose not.”

Somewhere in the background he’s aware that Connie is quietly shepherding Sasha and Jean out of the kitchen. He wonders what on earth Eren has planned.

Maybe it’s spiders after all. He shivers.

Eren shyly presents him a handful of something red. Marco accepts the dripping wet things curiously.

Then the aroma hits him.

“Roses?” Eren gives him a tiny nod in  response. Marco’s stomach flutters. “I... where did you even get these?”

“Do you like them?”

Marco realizes that Eren’s uncharacteristic shyness is stemming from his anxiety. He beams. “I love them!”  he all but shouts.

Eren opens his mouth as though he wants to say something, but then he freezes.

“Go on,” Marco prompts him.

“It’s stupid.”

“Since when has that ever stopped you from anything?” Marco teases gently.

Eren sticks his tongue out  at him. “You know what, Freckles? That’s it. I’ve decided that I don't _l_ —” He stops himself, looking terrified, but then hurriedly finishes, “—like you anymore.”

Marco pretends not to notice his stutter. He offers Eren his breeziest grin. “Is that so? Then I guess Mikasa and I will just have to eat all the honeycomb we got yesterday ourselves...”

Eren’s eyes light up at the mention of honeycomb, his favorite sweet treat. “You fight dirty,” he complains.

“Does that mean you like me again?”

“I guess so.” Eren squints at him. “But only if you sing for me later.”

Marco sighs. “Why are you so fixated on getting me to sing?”

“‘Cause you have a nice voice.” Eren grins. “Blame your mother for giving you her sweet siren’s voice.” He drops his gaze to the ground, suddenly shy. “...I could sweeten the deal up for you, too.”

“And how’s that?”

“...I’ll trade you a favor in exchange for the song.”

“Okay. Deal. But first—” Marco holds up his still-wet roses, “—I need to find a home for these."

* * *

 Marco winds up stealing a small wooden  bowl for his red roses. As they exit the kitchen, they find Connie, Sasha, and Jean waiting outside.

Connie shakes his head sadly at Eren. “You had your chance, and you blew it.”

“Chance for what?” Marco asks, cradling his bowl as though it’s a newborn baby.

“Ignore him,” Eren says through his teeth. Then, as a thought occurs to him, he exclaims, “Were you all listening?”

Sasha’s semi-sheepish grin and Jean’s uncomfortable fidgeting are a dead giveaway.

“You can still redeem yourself, you know,” Connie drawls.

Eren drapes an arm over Marco’s shoulders (which is quite a long stretch, given how much taller Marco is)  and starts to steer him away. “Come on, Marco, we’re leaving.”

“W-where are we going?” he stammers out. The weight of Eren’s arm is searing into his skin.

“Your room.”

Marco chokes.

“You have to put your roses somewhere, remember?”

“Oh.” He tries to steady his nerves. “Right.”

It’s only once they’re halfway across one of the rope bridges that Marco remembers one very important fact.

“Eren?”

“Yeah?”

“We forgot to get lunch.”

“...oh.”

* * *

 Marco’s room is exactly as he had left it before they’d departed for the baron’s estate. Extra clothes folded and stacked neatly in a pile in the corner; half-melted candle on his nightstand; bed piled with quilts--

Well, almost exactly.

He squints at the mess of quilts on his bed. Something looks different...

Eren slaps himself lightly in the forehead. Marco whirls around to look at him in alarm, sloshing water out of his bowl in the process.

“Sorry,” Eren mumbles. “I stole one of your blankets last night.”

Marco blinks. “What for?” A mental image arises of Eren burying his face in Marco’s blanket and drifting asleep like that, wrapped in a warm (quilted) embrace. A flush rises to his cheeks. _That’s so cute—_

“Jean needed one,” Eren explains, effectively bringing Marco back down to earth.

“Wait, so does that mean you left it on the ground?”

Eren thinks about it. “Now that you mention it, I left my blanket down there, too.”

Marco sighs. “Eren...”

“What? We’ve kind of had a crazy morning, ever since you woke me up and waved that poster—” Eren stops. “Shit, we should probably ask Armin what that says.”

Marco sets the bowl of roses on the small crate (his makeshift nightstand)  next to his bed. “I’ll ask him later.”

“I’ll keep Annie busy, then.” Marco raises an eyebrow at him. “What? We can’t have her there while Armin’s reading it. What if it’s something horrible?”

“What if it’s something horrible?” Marco repeats. “What if we’re housing someone from the capital? What if he’s going to sneak off in the night and lead the royal guard over here for another of their raids?” His voice is rising in pitch as his distress grows, but he barrels on. “Eren, there’s so many of us here. There’s so much at stake. What if we made a mistake in trying to save him?”  

He’s glad that he already put the flowers down. His hands are shaky.

“Hey, hey. Easy there.” Eren pats him on the shoulder reassuringly. “That won’t happen. They won’t raid our forest.”

Marco draws in a deep breath.

The raids were what had driven him out of Jinae, all those years ago. They had razed the seaport town down to the ground—and all because the King on his great gilded throne in Sina had decided that he didn’t want his human subjects mingling with the other peoples that often traveled to the southern coast.

“I don’t want it to happen here,” Marco whispers, as memories of the royal guard with their polished muskets and steel swords drawn race through his mind.

“It won’t.” Eren looks adamant.

“You can’t promise that.” Eren doesn’t know, he’s never seen a raid, he wasn’t there—

And then Eren’s lips are pressed to his cheek. Marco freezes. The contact is there for just a single fleeting moment, and then Eren pulls back.

“You worry too much. We’ll ask Armin about it, okay? And then we can be sure.”

Marco tries to get his brain to start functioning again. It stalls.

Eren just kissed him.

Kissed him.

Granted, it’s a chaste kiss, probably intended to be  platonic, but Marco is utterly stunned by the fact that this has just happened.

“...Marco? Are you all right?”

Marco nods once. Slowly.

He gathers up every shred of courage in his body. This probably isn’t the right moment, but there’s something in his gut screaming at him to just try, and Mikasa’s words are replaying in his head: _Do you think I’m wrong?_

 _No_ , he answers her.

“Eren.” He forces himself to meet the green-and-gold stare. “Can I get that favor now?”

“Um... sure? What did you have in mind—MMPH!”

It’s not a graceful kiss, the way Marco mashes their mouths together, but he can hardly bring himself to care, not when he has an armful of Eren and the spicy flavor  of cinnamon tingling on his tongue.

Eren tastes like his magic, Marco decides, drinking in the feeling, and then he lets go.

Eren stumbles backward, gazing at Marco with a sort of awestruck look in his eyes. “I—Marco, what was that?”

Marco draws the poster out of his belt. “We should go talk to Armin,” he says, pretending as though there isn’t a flaming blush spreading from his cheeks to his ear-tips and the back of his neck.

Eren shakes his head. “No, _we_ need to talk. About us.”

Marco winces. “Look, Eren, I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to do—” Words. Words! Where are the right words? He feels as though he’s falling from a tree, grasping for a branch to stop his descent, but unable to catch anything but air. The hurt expression on Eren’s face renders him momentarily speechless. He tries again. “I’m sorry—”

Eren scowls, eyes ablaze. Marco’s heart sinks.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he growls out, “unless that was a joke.”

Marco blinks rapidly. What?

Eren softens. “Just wanted to make that clear.”

“Crystal.”

“We still need to talk, okay? But we can put this off until later. Let’s go find Armin.” Eren’s stomach rumbles. Marco bites his lip to keep from smiling at the interruption. “And after that, I demand food. Preferably honeycomb.”

And this is why Marco likes Eren—he can be full of fire one moment, but he also knows how to act with Marco and his occasional seemingly random impulses.

“Armin’s it is, then,” Marco says, grateful for the temporary escape.

He ignores the ugly voice in the back of his mind that tells him, “That’s what you always do, coward. Try to escape.”

* * *

 Annie is not with Armin when Marco and Eren come knocking on his door.

“Where’s—” Eren begins, noticing the severe lack of petite, stony-faced girl in the room.

Armin looks up from a well-worn textbook. He’s bookmarked dozens of pages in this tome—Marco can see the differently-colored strips of fabric wedged between pages. “She’s meditating. Said she was having some weird visions that she needed to sort out.”

Marco doesn’t understand Annie’s particular brand of magic all that well. She’s brilliant at all the things that Eren can do, but with the occasional glimpse of the future thrown in the mix. Marco wonders if Eren ever has visions. There’s no telling, with sorcerers, mostly because no one knows anything about them. They’re just humans who inexplicably found that they were able to work magic, apparently, without any other race’s blood in them.

Marco unfurls the poster and hands it to Armin. “What does this say?”

Armin’s pale blue eyes skim over the text like dragonflies over a lake in summer. His eyebrows furrow.

“This is Jean,” he says.

Eren says, “We know that much. What’s it say?”

Armin chews on his lower lip, thinking. Marco prays that it doesn’t say he’s a missing royal scout—

“It says that he’s the King’s son. Our Crown Prince,” Armin tells them, and his eyes are wide with disbelief. “And the King is looking for him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://www.paintdripps.tumblr.com)! Feel free to come talk to me anytime--I really wanna gush about Providence, like, all the time, but I keep that to a minimum unless people ask. 
> 
> Did you like this chapter? Dislike it? What do you think will happen next? I want to know! :D
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading!


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Marco grits his teeth. 'Jean, look, I know that you’re scared, but I want to help. We want to help. But we need you to talk to us.'  
> 'I want to talk, Marco, really. I do,' Jean says. He looks down. 'But... I can’t.'  
> Marco knows what Eren would say if he were out here with them: 'Can’t, or won’t?'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who puts up with me and my incredibly slow updates. :) I love you all, and appreciate you for reading.  
> Onward we go!

Unsurprisingly, Eren breaks the stunned silence first.

“I thought he had an aristocratic nose,” he says, looking triumphant.

Marco has the sudden urge to laugh. Armin just stares at Eren, utterly bewildered.

“Are you sure?” Marco asks weakly. “The Crown Prince?”

“That’s what it says.” Armin puts his finger on the page. “Right here.”

Marco closes his eyes. Oh, they’re in so much trouble. They have the King’s son in custody. The King’s son.

The same King who had ordered the destruction of Jinae—and, undoubtedly, countless other towns—all those years ago.

“Why didn’t we know?” Marco groans. “I—shouldn’t someone have recognized him?”

Armin stands up to give Marco a reassuring pat on the arm. “We’re pretty far from Sina,” he says. “And it’s not like anyone here has much of an opportunity to stay informed on domestic politics.”

Eren clears his throat. “So, uh, does the King know that someone tried to kill Jean and dump him in the forest?”

Armin holds the poster up again. His eyes flit over the letters as quickly as hummingbirds over flowers. “No mention here of any assassination,” he says. He looks up at Marco. “But you say this poster just got put up yesterday?”

Marco nods in affirmation.

“And you found Jean the night before that,” Armin muses. He looks up at the ceiling, pondering something. “That’s very quick, especially considering the distance between Rose and the capital.”

“Well, he is the Crown Prince,” Eren points out. “They probably noticed that he was missing pretty quickly. The King probably just ordered everybody to get the word out fast, since he was worried about his son.”

“Maybe,” Armin acquiesces. He doesn’t look very convinced.

“We have to show him,” Marco says. “He needs to get back home.”

Eren barks out a laugh. “What do you plan to do? Escort him back to the palace doorstep?” He shakes his head. “This looks really, really bad.”

Marco can’t bring himself to disagree. They’ve got a lot on the line, and the evidence in their settlement is incriminating. He swallows. If he were to show his face in the capital and the wrong person got wind of who—or what—he was, he’d be facing the rest of his lifetime in prison.

“Jean could turn us all in if he wanted to,” Eren muses. “He’s seen everything here, he knows where our hideout is, he’s got royal blood...” He shakes his head. “We’re pretty much fucked.”

Armin purses his lips. “I think you should talk to Jean about this.” Marco can see the gears turning in his head; he wonders what Armin is thinking.

“Talk to him?” Eren echoes. “What for, so we can spook him into running away?”

“Something isn’t adding up,” Armin says, frowning. “But I can’t quite tell what.”

“A lot of things don’t, with this guy,” Eren mutters.

Marco nods. “We’ll go talk to him, Armin.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Eren asks him, raising an eyebrow. “What if he freaks out and does something?”

Marco straightens up. “I think we’ll be fine,” he says. “We’ve got each other, remember? What’s he going to do against a sorcerer and a half-siren?”

Armin nods encouragingly. “Here,” he says, rolling the poster back up and handing it to Marco. “You’ll be fine.”

* * *

They head back to the kitchen, partially because Marco figures that Jean will still be there with Connie and Sasha, and partially because Eren’s empty stomach is rumbling its complaints rather loudly.

They’re in luck; both objectives are in the kitchen. Connie’s sawing a freshly baked loaf of bread into slices with his silver knife. Marco inhales deeply, relishing the smell. It’s been awhile since they last had bread.

Jean is lingering by the stove, apparently watching Sasha sauté something in her bronze skillet.

Eren flies over to Connie. “That smells incredible.”

Connie grins and hands Eren a piece. “Flattery gets you pretty far in this kitchen, my man. So, how did it go?”

Eren feigns ignorance. “How did what go?”

“You know.” Connie waves his knife in Marco’s general direction. “That.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Marco calls. Connie only grins wider, unabashed.

“So you can answer me, then! How did it go?”

“Talk later,” Marco says, his stomach gurgling. “Food now.”

Sasha snickers. “I’ll take that to mean Eren didn’t do what he said he’d do.”

Marco ignores her teasing and Jean’s curious stare. Jean looks a little cagey, in all honesty. Marco can’t help but wonder if Jean knows what he’d just been discussing with Armin, but that’s impossible. He helps himself to a chunk of Connie’s beautiful, beautiful bread. He holds it up to his nose and closes his eyes, sniffing enthusiastically.

“Stars, you’re weird,” Connie remarks.

“What? It smells amazing.” Marco breaks off a piece of the fluffy white middle and shoves it into his mouth with all the grace of a starving dwarf. The dwarven have never been known for their table manners, and Mikasa has told Marco on more than one occasion that he would fit right in with their etiquette system. Marco remembers with a pang the friendly-faced dwarf traders who used to mill about Jinae while their ships were in port; when they spoke, their Human was brushed with the rolling consonants left over from their mother tongue.

Marco had always wondered about the dwarves’ homeland. His father had been there a few times—their kingdom was one rich in ore, and artisans were the most highly revered members of society there. They were the humans’ greatest competition in the steel industry, though.

The dwarves, too, must have lost their touch of magic, if they can handle steel processing and manufacturing steel goods.

Jean is staring at him. Marco chews and swallows self-consciously.

“Do you always eat like that?” Jean asks, and Marco can’t tell if that’s disdain or revulsion or amusement glittering in his eyes.

Marco wipes his mouth, ridding himself of some stray crumbs that have clung to his lips. “Sorry. I just really like it when Connie bakes.”

“Thith ith good bread,” Eren concurs through a mouthful of the stuff.

Connie winks.

And now the best part: the crust. Marco relishes the crunching sound it makes when he tears off a piece with his teeth. Jean is still watching him, out of some sort of horrified fascination, as he devours the remainder of his bread.

Marco eyes the other pieces of bread in Connie’s hands; Connie shakes his head. “Marco, no.”

“Fine, fine.” He laughs. “I won’t be a hog.”

Eren has finished eating, too, and makes eye contact with Marco. His meaning is clear: time for serious business.

“We’ll leave you two in peace,” Marco says, “but would you guys mind if Eren and I borrow Jean for a bit?”

Sasha waves a hand. “Go ahead. Just bring ’im back in one piece.” She flashes a grin at Jean. “That was a joke, String Bean. You’re as safe as safe can be with these two.”

“I know that,” Jean protests, although whether he’s saying it just to prove a point to Sasha, or he genuinely trusts Marco and Eren, it isn’t clear. But it warms Marco’s heart to think that it’s the latter.

“Where are we going?” Jean asks as Eren leads the way out of the kitchen.

“My room,” Eren answers. Marco quashes down the little thrill that runs through him; they’ve got something important to investigate. Although he definitely wouldn’t mind visiting Eren’s room more often.

And not just for that—

But also because Marco rarely gets to hang around in Eren’s room. They usually either stay in Marco’s room or Armin’s room; Mikasa never likes to have visitors, for some reason, and Eren’s room is permanently in a state of disarray that Mikasa finds completely intolerable.

“Oh.” Jean doesn’t sound thrilled. “...And what did you need me for, again?”

“We just want to talk,” Marco says breezily. He adds a touch of charm to his words, praying that Jean doesn’t find them suspicious.

Jean doesn’t reply, just follows Eren.

Marco glances upward, taking note of the way that the treetops are starting to turn a burnt auburn color. Fall is doing its job, he muses ruefully. And once this season is over, winter will set in. Marco finds himself wishing for summer’s return already—it’s a side effect of being born on the southern coast, the love of summer heat and sunshine. He doesn’t do well in cold weather, which is why he stockpiles his bed with as many blankets as he can get his hands on.

“Hey, uh, Annie—” Eren clears his throat.

Marco glances ahead and sees that Annie is standing in the middle of the bridge that they need to cross, seemingly staring off into space. The sorceress doesn’t appear to have heard Eren; her face is blank. Not that that’s unusual, but still.

“Annie?” he calls out.

Still no response. She’s as still as a statue. Marco starts to wonder if she’s ignoring them on purpose, or if there’s something wrong.

Jean voices Marco’s thoughts. “Is she alright?”

Eren frowns. “Let me see.” He steps onto the rope bridge, which sways a little under his weight. The planks squeak in protest as he walks across. “Annie? Annie, hey...” He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. No reaction. Eren withdraws his hand quickly. “Stars, she’s cold as ice!”

“What?” Marco racks his brain, trying to remember if there’s any sort of illness with that symptom. “Bring her back here!”

Eren scoops up the tiny blonde as though she doesn’t weigh a thing, and hurries back to Jean and Marco. Annie makes no protest against being carried, just lies in Eren’s arms limply.

Eren quickly puts her down on the deck, wincing. There’s frost glittering on the sleeves of his shirt, and little traces of frost growing on her face. Annie’s eyes are open, but unseeing. Marco wonders if she’s dead, but then he sees her chest rising and falling steadily. There’s the crisp smell of peppermint hanging in the air—the smell of Annie’s magic at work.  

“She’s still breathing, at least,” he says aloud.   
Eren speaks up. “I think she’s having one of her visions.”

“I hope so.” Marco wouldn’t know what it looks like when Annie is looking into the future; he’s never seen her like this before, though. “But why the cold?”

Eren shrugs.

“Should we bring her to Armin?” Jean suggests.

At that moment, Annie takes in a huge, shuddering breath. She blinks rapidly; the ice on Eren’s shirtsleeves melts away instantly.

“What are you doing?” she asksfaintly, looking addled.  

“We weren’t sure if you were okay—” Marco starts.

“Well, I’m fine.” She sits up. There’s a pinkness in her cheeks. “Thank you.”

“What did you see?” Eren asks her, extending a hand to help her stand up. She doesn’t take it, just turns to stare at Jean.

Jean fidgets.

“A lot of things,” comes the answer at last, and then Annie springs to her feet. “I’ve got to talk to Armin.” And then she goes off, striding gracefully, as though she hadn’t just been lying prone in a freezing heap moments before.  

Marco wonders what exactly she had seen.

“That was odd,” Jean says.

Eren just shrugs. “She’s like that. Now, come on.”

* * *

Eren’s room looks like it’s been hit by a tornado.

“No wonder you can never find anything,” Marco breathes, amazed.

Eren scrunches up his nose. “Shut up.”

There’s an open flask of something herbal-smelling on the ground—“Oops, I thought I’d sealed that,” Eren says, darting forward to pick it up and then spinning around wildly in search of a cork—and the warm spicy smell of Eren hanging in the air.

Marco closes the door behind them, which dims the room considerably. Eren only has one window, after all.

Eren points at his (unmade) bed. “You can sit over there, Jean.”

Wordlessly, Jean seats himself on the edge of Eren’s mattress. He looks at Marco expectantly.

“So, um...” Marco chews his lip. “How do I put this...?”

Jean looks back and forth between him and Eren warily.

“Your father is the King?” Eren blurts out.

Immediately, Jean’s mannerism shifts. The edginess reaches something more akin to panic; Marco can easily read the fear in the way that his eyes widen and his muscles tense.

Marco expects him to deny it, maybe, because there’s a part of him that still isn’t sure this is real, but the words that spill out of Jean’s mouth are not a denial.

“Please don’t make me go back.”

The plea is almost hysterical. Marco reaches out to soothe him, but Jean flinches away from his outstretched hand.

“We’re not going to send you back,” Marco tells him, and as he says it, he makes a decision: he is going to stand by these words. “But can you maybe... tell us why you don’t want to go back?”

Jean is silent.

Eren’s speaks up. “Sorry, but it’s just that we’re having trouble figuring out why a prince wouldn’t want to go back home to his palace.”

“How did you know?” Jean’s voice is quiet. “On the first day—didn’t you say you didn’t know who I was?”

Marco pulls the scroll out of his belt and unfurls it. “Your father put out this notice across the kingdom. He wants you back home.”

Jean shakes his head. “No, he doesn’t.”

Eren and Marco exchange glances.

“Then why—” Marco begins.

“It’s a cover,” Jean says, balling his hands up in fists. “He doesn’t think I’ll be found.” His words come out faster, more urgently, as though if Jean doesn’t get all of them out quickly enough, he’ll be silenced. “It’s a lie, it’s a lie, he knows I’m not going back—”

“Jean, what are you talking about?”

Jean fixes his stare on Marco. His amber eyes seem to glow in the dimness. “My father is the one who had me killed.”

* * *

Jean is even more hesitant to speak after that. He seems afraid, although of what, Marco can’t fathom; there’s a tenseness in his form, like a taut thread on the verge of snapping. The only other information that he shares with Marco and Eren is that the royal family really does not need him, and that his stepsister can have the throne since she’s gone through so much trouble for its sake.

“Stepsister?” Eren echoes.

Jean answers him hollowly. “The Queen’s daughter.”

Picking up on how Jean calls her ‘the Queen’ and not ‘Mother,’ Marco guesses that Jean doesn’t have the best of relationships with his stepmother. He vaguely remembers hearing news of the King remarrying, maybe five years ago.

He wonders what had happened to Jean’s mother.

“But why would your father want you dead?” Eren persists.

Jean hesitates. He looks at Marco. “Can I... would it be okay if I just don’t talk for a little bit? I need some fresh air.”

Marco nods. “I’ll go with you.” Jean gets up.

Eren watches them leave with a thoughtful look in his eyes.

* * *

The breeze outside is cool; the sky is starting to turn the slightest bit yellow as the sun starts to creep downward.

“Are you okay?” Marco asks.

Now that they’re outside with more light, Marco can see that Jean’s face is flushed red.

“It’s stuffy in there,” Jean says, sounding strained.

Marco remembers his cuts. He gestures at Jean’s torso. “Does it hurt?”

“Hmm? No.”

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay? Your face looks red.”

“I don’t have a fever.”

Somehow, Marco seriously doubts it. “Sorry to make you talk about something so stressful,” he says, making his voice as soothing as he can. “I know that you’re still healing.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jean says brusquely. There are a few beads of sweat on his forehead.

Marco frowns. “Jean, I really think you’re ill.” He reaches out for him, but Jean recoils.

“Don’t touch me!”

There’s a burning smell filling the air.

Marco quickly withdraws his hand. “Okay, okay, I won’t.”

Jean is trembling, and Marco remembers how Jean had started smoking in his sleep on that first day.  

“Jean, what is going on?”

Jean just shakes his head helplessly.

Marco grits his teeth. “Jean, look, I know that you’re scared, but I want to help. _We_ want to help. But we need you to talk to us.”

“I want to talk, Marco, really. I do,” Jean says. He looks down. “But... I can’t.”

Marco knows what Eren would say if he were out here with them: _“Can’t, or won’t?”_

“Just give me some time. I...” Jean trails off. “It’s a long story.”

Fair enough. Marco nods. He knows what it’s like to try to piece together a long story.

“I can wait,” he says, and Jean looks relieved, but then he adds, “But I need to know one thing today.” Jean opens his mouth, possibly to protest, but Marco keeps talking. “The safety of everyone here depends on it, Jean.”

“What is it?”

“Why exactly would the King want to have you killed?”

Jean looks like he wants to bolt away, but there’s nowhere to run. Marco tries to keep his expression encouraging, tries to keep his smile gentle.

When the answer finally comes, it’s in a voice so quiet than Marco almost doesn’t hear it. “...Because he doesn’t think I’m human.”

Marco nods slowly.

“But I’m not a monster,” Jean adds in a rush. There’s something desperate in his eyes—a glow of terror, Marco decides, and he feels a pang of regret at being the one who put it there. “I’m not.”

“Just because you’re not a human doesn’t mean that you’re a monster,” Marco says, thinking of his mother’s laughing eyes and gentle smile. She hadn’t been human, not really, not even with the spell that lent her legs at the price of pain. But she was kind, kinder than most people, Marco remembers, and the townsfolk hadn’t cared what she was besides the fact that she was Matthias Bodt’s wife and he loved her enough to stay in Jinae rather than hop onto whichever ship in port was headed to the end of the earth.

“I’m not,” Jean repeats through gritted teeth.

“I know,” Marco tells him.

“I won’t be, I don’t want—” His expression changes from one of concentration to pure panic. “Marco, get out of here!”

Marco starts to ask why.

The word doesn’t quite make it out of his mouth. The last thing that Marco registers as the world erupts into flame is the rough feel of the wooden planks beneath him as he falls to the ground.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is one of Jean's, so we'll get more insight into everything, I think ;) 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://www.paintdripps.tumblr.com) if you ever wanna chat! I'm always excited to make new friends. 
> 
> And, as always, thank you for reading! <3


End file.
